Azure Files Snapshots 180 day retention, shows 30 days in portal.

Question

We have the policy shown below, 180 days daily retention, monthly x 12, yearly x 10. Everything is working, the snapshots are expiring 180 days later, however when we go into the portal we only have snapshots showing 30 days prior, after 30 days they are dropping off the list. We assumed that it would hold (and display) all 180 dailies, with monthlies and yearlies showing the extended expiry. Why are we only seeing 30 days to restore from?

Answer 1

Hi Rob Condon,

Azure's portal view is designed to provide a simplified and user-friendly experience, but it sometimes does not show all the retained snapshots if they exceed certain limits for display purposes. While your retention policy is working as intended (since snapshots are expiring after 180 days), the portal might only display a subset of these snapshots due to the portal may have limits on how many snapshots are listed or visible at one time or by default, the portal might prioritize showing the most recent snapshots and filter older ones. The snapshots themselves are not deleted or lost; they are just not fully displayed in the portal UI.

Use PowerShell or the Azure CLI to confirm the presence of older snapshots beyond 30 days. This will give you a complete list of retained snapshots.

Azure CLI command:

az storage file list --account-name <storage-account-name> --share-name <share-name> --snapshot

PowerShell command:

Get-AzStorageFile -ShareName <share-name> -Context $context -IncludeDeleted -IncludeSnapshot

Confirm that your 180-day daily, monthly, and yearly retention is set and working as intended by using the above methods.

Even if older snapshots don’t appear in the portal, you can still restore files or data from those snapshots using the Azure CLI or PowerShell.

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