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As the world of data becomes increasingly complex, the need for efficient, secure, and flexible data management strategies has become more critical than ever. Microsoft's Azure platform, with its robust suite of tools, has become a go-to solution for many organizations. Among its standout features is Azure's immutable storage, which provides an additional layer of data security by preventing the alteration or deletion of stored data for a set period. Coupled with versioned backups, this feature can offer a powerful approach to data protection and recovery. In this blog post, we will explore how to use versioned backups with immutable storage in Azure, leveraging technologies such as SQL Server 2022, Azure SQL, Microsoft Fabric, Delta Lake, OpenAI + SQL, and Databricks.

To begin, let's consider a typical scenario where immutable storage can be beneficial: storing transaction logs from a SQL Server 2022 database. In such a scenario, ensuring that these logs cannot be tampered with is essential for audit and recovery purposes. By using Azure Blob Storage's immutable policy feature, we can declare a retention interval during which stored blobs are non-erasable and non-modifiable. To create a new immutable policy with a retention interval of 30 days, we can use the following T-SQL code:

CREATE IMMUTABLE POLICY WITH (   
    RETENTION_INTERVAL = 30   
) FOR CONTAINER 'mycontainer';

Once applied, this policy ensures that any blobs stored in 'mycontainer' cannot be modified or deleted for 30 days. This complements our versioned backups strategy, as we can be assured that our stored data remains intact and accurate for a specified period.

Next, let's look at how we can leverage Azure SQL to automate our backup process. Azure SQL Database has built-in support for automated backups, which can be easily configured through the Azure portal. For our purposes, we want to ensure that each backup is versioned, meaning that each backup is stored with a unique identifier, allowing us to retrieve data from any specific point in time. We can use the following T-SQL code to enable versioning for our backups:

BACKUP DATABASE MyDatabase TO DISK = 'azure.blob.core.windows.net/mycontainer/MyDatabase.bak'   
WITH FORMAT,   
    MEDIANAME = 'AzureBlob',   
    MEDIADESCRIPTION = 'Backup of MyDatabase',   
    NAME = 'MyDatabase Backup';

Microsoft Fabric, an Azure service that provides scalable and reliable microservices, can be used to streamline the backup and restore processes. It allows for the seamless orchestration of microservices responsible for handling versioned backups and managing immutable storage policies.

Delta Lake, a storage layer that brings ACID transactions to Apache Spark and big data workloads, can be used in conjunction with Azure Databricks to ensure that your data is reliable and of high quality. With Delta Lake, you can create snapshots of your data, which can then be stored immutably in Azure Blob Storage. This provides another layer of data protection, allowing you to revert to a previous state if necessary.

Lastly, OpenAI + SQL, a new tool that leverages artificial intelligence to simplify SQL queries, can be used to automate and streamline the process of creating versioned backups and managing immutable storage. With OpenAI + SQL, complex queries can be simplified, making the process of managing your data more efficient and straightforward.

In summary, Azure provides a robust and flexible platform for managing your data. By leveraging the power of versioned backups with immutable storage, you can ensure that your data is secure, reliable, and easy to manage. Whether you're storing transaction logs from SQL Server 2022, managing backups with Azure SQL, orchestrating microservices with Microsoft Fabric, maintaining data quality with Delta Lake and Azure Databricks, or simplifying queries with OpenAI + SQL, Azure has the tools to meet your data management needs.

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