How to enable soft delete on Azure file shares

Azure Files offers soft delete for file shares so that you can easily recover your data when it's mistakenly deleted by an application or other storage account user. To learn more about soft delete, see How to prevent accidental deletion of Azure file shares.

Applies to

File share type	SMB	NFS
Standard file shares (GPv2), LRS/ZRS
Standard file shares (GPv2), GRS/GZRS
Premium file shares (FileStorage), LRS/ZRS

Prerequisites

• If you intend to use Azure PowerShell, install the latest version.
• If you intend to use the Azure CLI, install the latest version.

Getting started

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. The Soft delete settings pane will appear.

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 have been soft deleted.

   This will display any shares currently in a Deleted state.

   

3. Select the share and select undelete. This will restore the share.

   You can confirm the share is restored since 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've identified the share you'd like to restore, you can use it with 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've identified 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. The Soft delete settings pane will appear.

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 step

To learn about another form of data protection and recovery, see Overview of share snapshots for Azure Files.