Recovery Services Vault stuck due to deleted Storage Account – backup items frozen in DeleteState = ToBeDeleted

Question

Recovery Services Vault stuck due to deleted Storage Account – backup items frozen in DeleteState = ToBeDeleted

NIKOLAOS ANTONIADIS 0

I deleted the Storage Account before deleting the Azure File Share backups registered in the Recovery Services Vault.

As a result, the vault is now in an orphan state. The backup items are stuck in DeleteState = ToBeDeleted and never transition to SoftDeleted.

The 14‑day retention timer never starts because the items never reach SoftDeleted.

I attempted to disable soft delete using Azure CLI, but I get: BMSUserErrorDisablingSoftDeleteStateNotAllowed “Disabling soft delete or enhanced security state is not allowed for this vault. Please contact Microsoft Support.”

I cannot delete the vault or the resource group. I cannot open a technical support request because my subscription is on the Basic support plan.

This is a service malfunction requiring backend cleanup.

Please escalate to the Azure Backup engineering team.

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Answer 1

Your diagnosis is likely correct: ToBeDeleted is an intermediate service state, so the 14-day soft-delete retention period has not started.

If the storage account was deleted within the last 14 days, first try restoring the original account from Storage accounts > Restore. The original resource group must exist, the name must not have been reused, and recovery is best effort. If restoration succeeds, return to the vault, stop protection and delete backup data for each Azure file share, then go to Backup Infrastructure > Storage Accounts and unregister the account. For Azure Files, use the portal or Azure PowerShell; the Azure Backup CLI vault-deletion path supports VM backup items only.

If the account cannot be restored and the items remain in ToBeDeleted, repeated vault deletion or soft-delete commands will not remove the orphaned service references. The BMSUserErrorDisablingSoftDeleteStateNotAllowed response confirms that this now needs Microsoft-side cleanup. Q&A cannot initiate that escalation. Collect the vault/resource IDs, deleted account name, deletion time, job/correlation IDs and screenshots, then open a technical Azure Support request. With Basic support, you will need a paid support plan or an existing partner/enterprise support channel.