Production Cosmos DB on Azure corrupted

Question

Production Cosmos DB on Azure corrupted

MALLESH REDDY 0

I dropped a few collections. This has resulted in the indexes getting messed up. I am unable to recreate indexes.

I need help to restore the previous DB version.

Pilladi Padma Sai Manisha 7,710 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2026-04-16T12:07:18.5133333+00:00

Hi MALLESH REDDY,
Thankyou for reaching microsoft Q&A!
Could you please share requested details in private message
Mean while could you please answer below questions:
• Which backup mode your account is using (continuous vs. periodic)?

• The API you’re using (SQL, MongoDB, Cassandra, etc.)?

• Roughly when you dropped the collections?

• Whether you have a secondary or test environment you can practice a restore on first?
Pilladi Padma Sai Manisha 7,710 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2026-04-20T11:14:29.7433333+00:00

Hi MALLESH REDDY,

I hope you had a chance to review the information shared earlier, Please share the requested details that can be helpful for us to troubleshoot faster.
Santhosh Kumar Machukuri 0 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2026-04-22T00:49:44.73+00:00

Hi MALLESH REDDY,

I hope you are doing well. Please consider this as a follow up, kindly let us know if you have got the chance to check the message from the engineer Pilladi Padma Sai Manisha as she requested for some details to further troubleshoot the issue. Looking forward to your response.

1 answer

Your answer

Pilladi Padma Sai Manisha 7,710 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2026-04-16T12:07:18.5133333+00:00

Hi MALLESH REDDY,
Thankyou for reaching microsoft Q&A!
Could you please share requested details in private message
Mean while could you please answer below questions:
• Which backup mode your account is using (continuous vs. periodic)?

• The API you’re using (SQL, MongoDB, Cassandra, etc.)?

• Roughly when you dropped the collections?

• Whether you have a secondary or test environment you can practice a restore on first?
Pilladi Padma Sai Manisha 7,710 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2026-04-20T11:14:29.7433333+00:00

Hi MALLESH REDDY,

I hope you had a chance to review the information shared earlier, Please share the requested details that can be helpful for us to troubleshoot faster.
Santhosh Kumar Machukuri 0 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2026-04-22T00:49:44.73+00:00

Hi MALLESH REDDY,

I hope you are doing well. Please consider this as a follow up, kindly let us know if you have got the chance to check the message from the engineer Pilladi Padma Sai Manisha as she requested for some details to further troubleshoot the issue. Looking forward to your response.

Answer 1

Hello !

Thank you for posting on MS Learn Q&A.
I had a similar issue before and this usually does not mean the whole Cosmos DB account is corrupted. I think it is more likely the dropped collections were deleted successfully and now you need either to a restore to recover the old version or to recreate the collections and indexes correctly.

For Azure Cosmos DB, whether you can restore a previous version depends on your backup mode. If the account uses continuous backup and Azure supports point in time restore within the retention window.

If it uses periodic backup, restore is typically done by Azure support from available snapshots rather than self service.

If your issue is specifically that index recreation fails you need to verify whether the failing indexes are unique indexes on Cosmos DB for MongoDB with continuous backup and in that case, you may need to restore the original collection or recreate the collection first and define the unique indexes at creation time.

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Production Cosmos DB on Azure corrupted

1 answer

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