Azure SQL is Microsoft's fully managed relational database service built on SQL Server. It delivers enterprise-grade performance, high availability, and scalability without the overhead of managing underlying infrastructure. Azure SQL is popular: according to 6sense, Azure SQL currently ranks number 2 in market share among database platforms, trailing only Microsoft's SQL Server On-Premises.
Many organizations run mission-critical workloads on Azure SQL. Protecting data in the cloud is as essential as protecting it in the data center. In fact, it’s non-negotiable.
Rubrik delivers comprehensive Azure SQL protection built on simplicity, security, and scale. Rubrik leverages a modern database copy methodology to streamline onboarding, eliminate unnecessary credentials and configuration overhead, provide immutability by default. This enables secure, private backups so your Azure SQL databases are protected and recoverable.
How You Protect Azure SQL Matters
Azure's native backup capabilities offer a starting point, but architecture matters. Native tooling comes with real constraints: PITR backups are deleted when the source server is deleted. Cross-subscription recovery isn't supported natively. On-demand backups aren't available and immutability isn't enabled by default. Even when configured, a sufficiently privileged account can still delete backups.
These aren't edge cases; they're gaps that become critical exactly when you need your backups most.
Rubrik goes beyond what native tools provide, delivering flexible SLA-driven policies, true immutability backed by Azure Blob WORM locks, cross-region and cross-subscription recovery, and consolidated management through a single control plane.
Three Core Architectural Principles
Rubrik's Azure SQL architecture was designed from the ground up around three pillars: scale, security, and simplicity.
Scale: Rubrik leverages a transactionally consistent, temporary copy of the source database to drive a parallel, streaming architecture designed for the most demanding enterprise workloads. Data movement and compression occur entirely on the copy rather than the live instance, isolating your production environment from the resource overhead typically associated with high-scale backups. Benefits include:
Back up faster, recover faster. Rubrik runs the export process against a temporary copy rather than the live database. That allows Rubrik to protect data without impacting production. Furthermore, Rubrik can target backup throughput of over 100 MiB/sec and restore throughput of over 50 MiB/sec, so large databases are protected quickly and recovery windows stay tight.
Protect at Scale. Rubrik can protect databases up to 12 TB within a 24-hour window, leveraging the Azure SQL DB Hyperscale Tier for optimal write performance, helping to ensure even your largest workloads are protected.
Security: A backup strategy is only as strong as the controls around it. Rubrik's Azure SQL protection is built security-first, providing private endpoint support to shrink the attack surface at every layer. Here’s how you benefit:
Less exposure, less risk. Eliminating credential management and Logic App dependencies removes two of the most common sources of configuration drift and credential sprawl, reducing your attack surface before a threat ever materializes.
Your backup traffic stays private. Rubrik fully supports Azure private endpoints, ensuring data flows over secure, private connections and never traverses public endpoints, so you maintain compliance posture without operational compromise.
Ransomware has nowhere to go. Rubrik leverages Azure Blob Write-Once, Read-Many (WORM) locks tied to retention-locked SLA Domain policies. This ensures that every backup is immutable for its full retention period. For an additional layer of isolation, Rubrik Cloud Vault provides a fully managed, air-gapped storage target in a Rubrik-hosted environment, keeping a copy of your backups completely out of reach from attackers in your tenant. Between WORM-locked local backups and an isolated RCV copy, your recovery points are protected from alteration, encryption, or deletion.
Simplicity: Rubrik's Azure SQL protection delivers what modern organizations demand: fast onboarding, a hardened security posture, private connectivity, and the scalability to handle the largest workloads. Whether you're protecting a handful of databases or managing an enterprise-scale deployment, Rubrik goes well beyond what native tooling can provide, ensuring your Azure SQL data is always secure, recoverable, and protected.
Ready to see it for yourself? Take Rubrik's Azure SQL protection for a test drive using the self-guided, click-through lab on Rubrik Explore.