Azure recovery points not cleaned up

Hello @Helge Thank you for contacting us through Microsoft Q&A platform. Happy to help!

It is possible for recovery points in Azure Backup to have expiration times that are in the past, especially if retention policies have been changed or if backups were taken before the current retention policy was put in place.

By default, Azure Backup retains recovery points for a period of time based on the retention policy that is configured for the backup. If a recovery point's expiration time has passed, it will be automatically deleted by Azure Backup.

If soft delete is enabled for the recovery services vault, then the expired recovery point stays in soft deleted state and isn't cleaned up. No charges are incurred when a recovery point is in soft-deleted state.

Source: https://video2.skills-academy.com/en-us/azure/backup/manage-recovery-points#impact-of-expired-recovery-points-for-items-in-soft-deleted-state

Where do you see the Recovery Points marked as expired?

Could it be that those Recovery Points where manual backups with a different expiring date than the one set on the policy?

Slightly changing the retention period on the policy makes any difference on the next day?

Seen in the past an aesthetic issue where Recovery Points seem to be available but where in fact already purged.

One thing that you can do to check this is to attempt a restore from those expired Recovery Points. If possible and expiration date is not being honored, then you should file a support request to unblock this from backend

Hope this helps. Let us know if you need further assistance in this matter!

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