Deleting a Recovery Services Vault

This blog post how to delete an Azure Backup Recovery Services vault. It contains instructions for removing dependencies and then deleting a vault, and deleting a vault by force.

Before you start, it’s important to understand that you can’t delete a Recovery Services vault that has servers registered in it, or that holds backup data.

• To delete a vault gracefully, unregister servers in it, and remove vault data.
  
• If you don’t want to retain any data in the Recovery Services vault, and want to delete the vault, you can delete the vault by force.
  
• If you try to delete a vault, but can’t, the vault is still configured to receive backup data.
  

Log in to Azure

Log in to the Azure portal at https://portal.azure.com.

Click All services and in the Filter, type Recovery Services Vault, and then click Recovery Services Vault.

Delete a vault from the Azure portal

From the list, select the vault you want to delete. The vault dashboard opens.

In the vault dashboard, click Delete.

Verify that you want to delete.

If there are vault dependencies, the Vault deletion error appears:

Remove vault dependencies and delete vault

• In the Backup Items menu, remove dependencies:
  
  • Azure Storage (Azure Files) backups
    
  • SQL Server in Azure VM backups
    
  • Azure virtual machines backups
    
• In the Backup Infrastructure menu, remove dependencies:
  
  • Microsoft Azure Backup Server (MABS) backups
    
  • System Center DPM backups
    

Remove backup items

This procedure provides an example that shows you how to remove backup data from Azure Backup Server.

Click Backup Items > Azure Backup Server

Double-click on Files and Folders, and click Delete.

On the Delete menu, type the name of the item, and click Delete.

Remove Azure Backup agent recovery points

In the vault dashboard menu, click Backup Infrastructure.

Click Backup Management Servers to view the infrastructure servers.

    

In the Protected Servers list, click Azure Backup Agent.

Click the server in the list of servers protected using Azure Backup agent.

On the selected server dashboard, click Delete.

On the Delete menu, type the name of the item, and click Delete.

Delete the vault after removing dependencies

When all dependencies have been removed, scroll to the Essentials pane in the vault menu.

• There shouldn’t be any Backup items, Backup management servers, or Replicated items listed.
  
• If items still appear in the vault, remove them.
  

When there are no more items in the vault, on the vault dashboard click Delete.

To verify that you want to delete the vault, click Yes. The vault is deleted and the portal returns to the New service menu.