Question

A financial services company runs a mission-critical SQL Server workload on an Azure VM. Compliance requires that database backups be retained for 7 years and be protected against accidental or malicious deletion, including deletion attempts by rogue administrators. The solution must minimize operational overhead and avoid deploying separate backup infrastructure. Which approach should you recommend?

Accepted Answer

Use Azure Backup with the SQL Server in Azure VM workload extension, configure a long-term retention policy of 7 years, and enable immutability with the immutable vault lock on a Recovery Services vault.

Answer

Configure native SQL Server maintenance plans to write full backups to an Azure Files share, and apply an SMB share-level access policy to prevent deletions.

Answer

Use Azure Backup VM-level (guest) backups with a 7-year retention policy and enable soft delete on the Recovery Services vault.

Answer

Export SQL backups as BACPAC files nightly to a general-purpose v2 storage account with a lifecycle policy that moves them to the Archive tier after 30 days.