I used to have an azure sql db 2 years ago, but now I can find no record of it. Is there any way that Azure support could look and see if they can restore it?

Question

I used to have an azure sql db 2 years ago, but now I can find no record of it. Is there any way that Azure support could look and see if they can restore it?

Answer 1

Welcome to Microsoft Q&A

Hello Benjamin Hefner, I hope you are doing well,

The short answer is that unless you explicitly configured a specific backup policy two years ago, the database is permanently deleted, and Azure Support cannot recover it.

By default, Azure SQL Databases rely on Point-in-Time Restore (PITR) automated backups. The maximum retention period for these standard backups is 35 days. When an active database is deleted, its final backup is retained for this configured period (between 1 and 35 days) and then permanently purged from Azure's storage clusters.

The only way a database backup survives for 2 years is if you manually configured Long-Term Retention (LTR) before the database was deleted. LTR allows backups to be copied to separate read-access geo-redundant storage (RA-GRS) blobs and kept for up to 10 years.

How to check if you have an LTR backup:

Go to the Azure Portal and navigate to Azure SQL.

Select your logical SQL Server (if it still exists) or search for Deleted databases.

1. Check the Long-term retention or Available backups tabs.

If you did not explicitly configure LTR, the data was physically overwritten nearly two years ago. Because Azure complies with strict data privacy and erasure standards, Microsoft Support does not keep hidden archives of customer data beyond the configured retention windows.

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