Azure file share soft-delete

Azure Files offers soft delete, which allows you to recover your file share if you mistakenly deleted it.

Applies to

Management model	Billing model	Media tier	Redundancy	SMB	NFS
Microsoft.Storage	Provisioned v2	HDD (standard)	Local (LRS)
Microsoft.Storage	Provisioned v2	HDD (standard)	Zone (ZRS)
Microsoft.Storage	Provisioned v2	HDD (standard)	Geo (GRS)
Microsoft.Storage	Provisioned v2	HDD (standard)	GeoZone (GZRS)
Microsoft.Storage	Provisioned v1	SSD (premium)	Local (LRS)
Microsoft.Storage	Provisioned v1	SSD (premium)	Zone (ZRS)
Microsoft.Storage	Pay-as-you-go	HDD (standard)	Local (LRS)
Microsoft.Storage	Pay-as-you-go	HDD (standard)	Zone (ZRS)
Microsoft.Storage	Pay-as-you-go	HDD (standard)	Geo (GRS)
Microsoft.Storage	Pay-as-you-go	HDD (standard)	GeoZone (GZRS)

How soft delete works

When soft delete is enabled, deleted file shares are retained in a soft deleted state for the defined retention period before being permanently deleted. When you undelete a file share, the file share and all of contents, including snapshots, are restored to their state prior to deletion.

Important

Soft delete only works on a file share level. If you want to be able to restore deleted files, you can use share snapshots or Azure file share backup.

Soft delete for file shares is enabled at the storage account level so the soft delete settings apply to all file shares within a storage account. New storage accounts have soft delete enabled by default, but you can enable or disable soft delete as desired for new or existing storage accounts. If you disable soft delete, any file shares deleted before disabling soft delete can still be undeleted.

By default, the retention period for file shares is 7 days, but you can specify any retention period between 1 and 365 days. The retention period clock starts when the file share is deleted. You can change the soft delete retention period at any time. Shares deleted before the retention period update expire based on the retention period that was configured when that data was deleted.

To permanently delete a file share in a soft delete state before its expiry time, you must undelete the share, disable soft delete, and then delete the share again. If desired, remember to reenable soft delete for the storage account to protect other file shares from accidental deletion.

For soft-deleted provisioned file shares, the file share quota (the provisioned size of a file share) is used in the total storage account quota calculation until the soft-deleted share expiry date, when the share is fully deleted.

Billing

Billing for soft delete depends on the billing model of the file share. For more information, see the following:

• Provisioned v2 soft-delete
• Provisioned v1 soft-delete
• Pay-as-you-go soft-delete

Toggle soft delete settings

The following sections show how to enable and use soft delete for Azure file shares on an existing storage account:

Portal

1. Sign in to the Azure portal.

2. Navigate to your storage account and select File shares under Data storage.

3. Select Disabled next to Soft delete.

4. Select Enabled for Soft delete for all file shares.

5. Under File share retention period in days, use the slider to specify a number between 1 and 365 days.

6. Select Save to confirm your data retention settings.

   

PowerShell

To enable soft delete, you must update the settings for all Azure file shares, also known as the FileService properties. The following example enables soft delete for all file shares in a storage account. Remember to replace <resource-group> and <storage-account> with the appropriate values for your environment.

$resourceGroupName = "<resource-group>"
$storageAccountName = "<storage-account>"

Update-AzStorageFileServiceProperty `
    -ResourceGroupName $resourceGroupName `
    -StorageAccountName $storageAccountName `
    -EnableShareDeleteRetentionPolicy $true `
    -ShareRetentionDays 7

You can verify if soft delete is enabled and view its retention policy with the following command:

Get-AzStorageFileServiceProperty `
    -ResourceGroupName $resourceGroupName `
    -StorageAccountName $storageAccountName

Azure CLI

To enable soft delete, you must update a file client's service properties. The following example enables soft delete for all file shares in a storage account. Remember to replace <resource-group> and <storage-account> with the appropriate values for your environment.

resourceGroupName="<resource-group>"
storageAccountName="<storage-account>"

az storage account file-service-properties update \
    --resource-group $resourceGroupName \
    --account-name $storageAccountName \
    --enable-delete-retention true \
    --delete-retention-days 7

You can verify if soft delete is enabled and view its retention policy with the following command:

az storage account file-service-properties show \
    -resource-group $resourceGroupName \
    -account-name $storageAccountName

Restore soft deleted file share

Portal

To restore a soft deleted file share:

1. Navigate to your storage account and select File shares.

2. On the file share blade, enable Show deleted shares to display any shares that are soft deleted.

   This displays any shares currently in a Deleted state.

   

3. Select the share and select undelete to restore the share.

   You can confirm the share is restored when its status switches to Active.

   

PowerShell

To restore a soft deleted file share, you must first get the -DeletedShareVersion value of the share. To get that value, use the following command to list out all the deleted shares for your storage account.

Get-AzRmStorageShare `
    -ResourceGroupName $resourceGroupName `
    -StorageAccountName $storageAccountName `
    -IncludeDeleted

Once you identify the share you want to restore, you can use the following command to restore it:

Restore-AzRmStorageShare `
    -ResourceGroupName $resourceGroupName `
    -StorageAccountName $storageAccountName `
    -DeletedShareVersion 01D5E2783BDCDA97 # replace with your deleted version number

Azure CLI

To restore a soft deleted file share, you must first get the --deleted-version value of the share. To get that value, use the following command to list out all the deleted shares for your storage account.

az storage share-rm list \
    --resource-group $resourceGroupName \
    --storage-account $storageAccountName \
    --include-deleted

Once you identify the share you'd like to restore, you can restore it with the following command:

az storage share-rm restore -n deletedshare --deleted-version 01D64EB9886F00C4 -g yourResourceGroup --storage-account yourStorageaccount

Disable soft delete

If you want to stop using soft delete, follow these instructions. To permanently delete a file share that's been soft deleted, you must undelete the share, disable soft delete, and then delete the share again.

Portal

1. Navigate to your storage account and select File shares under Data storage.

2. Select Enabled next to Soft delete.

3. Select Disabled for Soft delete for all file shares.

4. Select Save to confirm your data retention settings.

   

PowerShell

You can use the following command to disable soft delete on your storage account.

Update-AzStorageFileServiceProperty `
    -ResourceGroupName $resourceGroupName `
    -StorageAccountName $storageAccountName `
    -EnableShareDeleteRetentionPolicy $false

Azure CLI

You can use the following command to disable soft delete on your storage account.

az storage account file-service-properties update \
    --resource-group $resourceGroupName \
    --storage-account $storageAccountName \
    --enable-delete-retention false

Next steps

To learn how to prevent a storage account from being deleted or modified, see Apply an Azure Resource Manager lock to a storage account.

To learn how to apply locks to resources and resource groups, see Lock resources to prevent unexpected changes.