Enable Zero Data Retention

Hello Sandeep Sindham,

Welcome to Microsoft Q&A and Thank you for reaching out.

ZDR requires explicit approval and is not enabled by default.As Zero Data Retention is not a self‑service portal setting , it requires

• An approved Azure OpenAI resource
• A formal support request and business justification
• Typically an Enterprise Agreement (EA) or Microsoft Customer Agreement (MCA) (approved exceptions may be considered based on use case and account status)

Please note that approval is granted per Azure OpenAI resource and not per request or per application.

Zero Data Retention can be enabled as follows:

1. he first step is to deploy or identify an Azure OpenAI resource to be used for the workload.
2. Then please submit a support request requesting for Data Retention or modified abuse monitoring with use‑case description and data sensitivity & compliance requirements
3. Once approved, the platform flags the resource so that customer content is not retained and human review is disabled.

No additional configuration or code change is required to activate ZDR once the resource is approved.

Azure AI Foundry considerations:

When Azure OpenAI models are accessed through Azure AI Foundry , then

• Zero Data Retention still applies to the underlying Azure OpenAI resource
• Optional Foundry features (such as agents, file uploads, threads, tracing, or evaluation artifacts) may store data by design
• For strict zero‑retention requirements, stateless inference patterns should be used and stateful features should be avoided or carefully controlled.

Please note that even with ZDR enabled, the following need to be handled separately as ZDR only affects platform‑side storage and review, and not application logging.

• Application logs (App Insights, custom telemetry)
• Prompt tracing / OpenTelemetry instrumentation
• Stored files, chat history, threads, or RAG indexes
• Client‑side request/response storage

Once ZDR is approved and applied at the Azure OpenAI resource level it covers all requests to that resource as asked -  prompt logging, human review , customer content is excluded from abuse‑monitoring logs and data is processed transiently and not persisted

References:

Microsoft Foundry documentation | Microsoft Learn

Azure Direct Models abuse monitoring - Microsoft Foundry | Microsoft Learn

 Thank you