Soft delete protects your Azure file shares from accidental deletion. The following feature was already made available for SMB File share. Today, we are announcing the general availability of soft delete for NFS Azure file shares. The functionality will remain the same. Soft delete is like a recycle bin for your file shares. When a NFS file share is deleted, it transitions to a soft deleted state in the form of a soft deleted snapshot. You get to configure how long the soft deleted data is recoverable before it is permanently erased as part of the retention policy, by default its set to 7 days.

Today, soft deleted NFS shares are not being counted towards the Storage account limit. We are providing a 30-day window (grace period) to update or change your automation scripts to account for soft deleted capacity when soft delete is enabled for NFS shares. By Sept 1st, 2024, we will roll out the change to start counting soft deleted capacity towards the account limit. 

What will change from September 1st 2024?

soft deleted capacity will start counting towards storage account limits, this means the number of file shares that you can create on given storage account will be guarded by storage account limits when soft delete is enabled. Refer here for more information on supported capacity limits.

Soft-deleted shares will be listed under deleted shares in the file share blade. To mount them or view their contents, you must undelete them. Upon undelete, the share will be recovered to its previous state, including all metadata as well as snapshots (Previous Versions). To successfully perform undelete ensure you do not have an active file share with the same name as that of deleted state.

Soft delete feature is enabled by default on a storage account, the setting will apply to both NFS and SMB file shares. If you have an existing NFS file share in soft delete enabled account then, you would be enrolled for billing automatically. Soft delete enabled shares are billed on the used capacity when soft deleted at the snapshot rate while in the soft delete state. Billing would stop as soon the data is permanently deleted after the retention expires on the soft deleted state. Please refer here for Pricing and billing details.  

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