Soft delete for on-premises data gateways in Microsoft Fabric (Preview)

Soft delete is a gateway lifecycle capability in Microsoft Fabric that retains deleted on-premises data gateway clusters for 30 days instead of removing them immediately. Authorized administrators can recover them before permanent deletion. Without soft delete, deleting a gateway is permanent and administrators must recreate the gateway if they remove it accidentally.

Tip

Soft delete is only available for enterprise on-premises data gateways. Personal mode gateways and virtual network data gateways aren't supported.

Manage deleted gateways

The gateway management page includes a Deleted gateways section. From there, admins can open a pane that lists gateways deleted within the 30-day retention window. Each deleted gateway entry can show the gateway name, type, deletion timestamp, associated admins, and available actions such as Recover. Where enabled, tenant admins may also be able to permanently delete a gateway before the retention period ends.

Tip

When you remove a gateway cluster, the system also soft-deletes all associated connections and permanently removes them after 30 days.

Deleted members

The same soft delete behavior applies to gateway members (instances) deleted from an on-premises data gateway cluster. During the 30-day retention window, authorized gateway administrators can restore all deleted members in the cluster from the Deleted members list in the deleted gateways experience.

After the retention period expires, the deleted member is permanently removed and can no longer be recovered.

Recovery for accidental deletion

The recovery flow is designed for accidental deletion scenarios. An authorized admin can select a deleted gateway and choose Recover. After recovery, the gateway is restored at the cluster level with its previous metadata and permissions.

Recovery isn't a backup and restore system. It doesn't recover individual gateway nodes, individual data sources, or partial permission sets as separate objects. Instead, the gateway is recovered as a gateway resource within the soft delete retention window.

Governance and retention controls

Visibility and recovery are permission aware. Tenant admins and gateway admins can delete, recover, and, where supported, permanently delete gateways. Non-admin users can't recover deleted gateways. If a user encounters a deleted gateway, the experience directs them to contact the gateway admin for recovery.

Important

If a gateway is permanently deleted from the deleted gateways experience, the action can't be reversed.

API and audit support

API and audit logs aren't supported in the preview for soft delete.

Soft delete in practice

Gateway admins can remove a gateway cluster or a node in the cluster and recover it.
The gateway management page in Microsoft Fabric includes a Deleted gateways entry point alongside the list of active data gateways.
From the deleted gateways pane, admins with the required permissions can review all gateways deleted within the retention window and choose Recover for the gateway they want to restore.