Are Soft Delete and Lifecycle Management Policy Compatible in Azure Blob Storage?

Question

Azure blob storage allows for soft deletion of blobs and it also supports automatic deletion of blobs via the lifecycle management policy. However, are these two feature compatible with each other?

In other words, if soft deletion is enabled for a blob storage container and the lifecycle management policy for that container is configured to delete blobs older than a certain time period, then will the lifecycle management policy soft delete old blobs or will it hard delete?

Answer 1

Hi Khushaal Kurswani,
Greetings! Welcome to Microsoft Q&A Forum, Thanks for raising this good question.
When both soft deletion and lifecycle management policies are enabled in Azure Blob Storage, they work together in a compatible manner.

If a lifecycle management policy is configured to delete blobs older than a certain time period, and soft deletion is enabled, the lifecycle management policy will soft delete the blobs. This means that the blobs will be marked for deletion but will remain recoverable for the duration of the soft delete retention period. During this period, you can restore the deleted blobs if needed.

After the retention period expires, the blobs will be permanently deleted. This approach ensures that you have a safety net to recover accidentally deleted data while still managing the lifecycle of your data effectively.
For Additional information, here’s how it works:

• Soft Delete: When a blob is deleted, it is retained in a soft-deleted state for a specified retention period, allowing you to restore it if needed.

Lifecycle Management Policy: This policy can be configured to delete blobs based on conditions such as age or last access time. When it triggers a delete action, it will respect the soft delete settings and move the blobs to a soft-deleted state.
For Additional information, please refer the below documents:

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