How many incremental snapshots can be created for a single disk?

Maksym Kharchenko2 41 Reputation points
2023-04-21T12:30:01.6033333+00:00

I'm interested in the Azure Disk Backup solution. The documentation says: Azure Disk Backup uses incremental snapshots, which are limited to 200 snapshots per disk. And the other documentation says:  A total of 500 incremental snapshots can be created for a single disk. Can anyone clarify the following?

  1. Why are these limits different?
  2. What exactly are they limiting, the number of snapshots that exist simultaneously or the number of snapshots that can be created for a single disk?
  3. Assume I have a disk backup policy with an hourly backup frequency and maximum retention (18 days). Will my disk backup job continue to create new snapshots after that disk's total created snapshots exceed the limit (after 21 days)?  
Azure Backup
Azure Backup
An Azure backup service that provides built-in management at scale.
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Azure Disk Storage
Azure Disk Storage
A high-performance, durable block storage designed to be used with Azure Virtual Machines and Azure VMware Solution.
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  1. Raman Kumar 0 Reputation points Microsoft Employee
    2023-10-27T23:05:05.5133333+00:00

    The 500 limit of incremental snapshots per Azure disk is not over the lifetime of a disk. You can always delete older snapshots of a disk to make room for newer snapshots such that at a given point in time your disks do not hit the max limit of 500 snapshots per disk.

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