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Soft Delete Pitr Azure Storage

Soft Deletes and Point in Time Restore🔗

🔹 1. Soft Delete🔗

Soft delete = "safety net" for accidental deletion. When enabled, deleted data isn’t immediately removed - instead, it’s kept for a retention period so you can restore it.

Where it applies🔗

  • Azure Blob Storage / Data Lake Storage Gen2

  • When you delete a blob or snapshot, it goes into a soft-delete state.

  • Retention period: 1-365 days (configurable).

  • You can list and restore these blobs from the portal, PowerShell, or CLI.

  • Azure Files

  • Protects deleted file shares.

  • Azure SQL Database / Managed Instance

  • Soft delete applies to backups. Deleted database backups are retained for 7 days by default.

📌 Example (Blob Storage):

  • Delete a blob at container1/data.csv.
  • It’s recoverable for (say) 30 days.
  • After 30 days, it’s permanently purged.

🔹 2. Point-in-Time Restore (PITR)🔗

PITR = restore database to a specific time within a retention period. It uses continuous transaction log backups + full/differential backups.

Where it applies🔗

  • Azure SQL Database

  • Default retention: 7–35 days (depending on service tier).

  • You can restore to any second within that window.

  • PITR creates a new database (it doesn’t overwrite the original).

  • Cosmos DB

  • Continuous backup with PITR up to 30 days.

  • Azure Blob Storage

  • Versioning + change feed + soft delete together simulate PITR at object level.

📌 Example (SQL Database):

  • Retention set to 14 days.
  • A DROP TABLE happened at 2025-08-25 10:00:00.
  • You can restore the database to 2025-08-25 09:59:59 and recover data.

🔑 Difference🔗

Feature Purpose Retention
Soft Delete Recover deleted data (blob, file share, backups). 1–365 days (configurable)
PITR Restore entire DB/container to any time in past. SQL: 7–35 days (default)

✅ When to Use🔗

  • Soft delete → accidental object deletion (blob/file/share/backup).
  • PITR → logical corruption, dropped table, wrong update query, ransomware attack.