Snapshots and Automating Backup using different ways in Azure.

Hello Piyush, it sounds like you want to identify all managed‐disk snapshots in your subscription that are older than 30 days and haven’t been used to create any new disks or VMs in the last 30 days. You can tackle this with a short PowerShell or CLI/Resource Graph workflow:

1. Use Azure PowerShell to pull snapshots older than 30 days

   
      # Log in and select your subscription
   
      Connect-AzAccount
   
      Select-AzSubscription -SubscriptionName "YourSubName"
   
      # Find snapshots older than 30 days
   
      $oldSnaps = Get-AzSnapshot | 
   
        Where-Object { $_.TimeCreated -lt (Get-Date).AddDays(-30) }
   
      # Of those, filter out any that were used as the source for a new disk
   
      $unusedSnaps = foreach ($snap in $oldSnaps) {
   
        $disk = Get-AzDisk | 
   
          Where-Object {
   
            $_.CreationData.SourceResourceId -eq $snap.Id `
   
            -or $_.CreationData.SourceUri -eq $snap.Id
   
          }
   
        if (-not $disk) { $snap }
   
      }
   
      # List the unused, old snapshots
   
      $unusedSnaps | Select-Object Name, ResourceGroupName, TimeCreated
   
   

2. Or use Azure CLI + Resource Graph for a single query

   
      # Log in and set subscription
   
      az login
   
      az account set --subscription "YourSubName"
   
      # Query snapshots older than 30 days that aren’t the source of any disk
   
      az graph query -q "
   
        Resources
   
        | where type =~ 'microsoft.compute/snapshots'
   
        | where properties.timeCreated < ago(30d)
   
        | join kind=leftouter (
   
            Resources
   
            | where type == 'Microsoft.Compute/disks'
   
          ) on $left.id == $right.properties.creationData.sourceResourceId
   
        | where isnull(right.id)
   
        | project snapshotName = name, resourceGroup, properties.timeCreated
   
      " -o table
   
   

3. Automate & schedule • Drop the script into an Azure Automation runbook or a scheduled Azure Function • Email or tag snapshots you plan to keep/delete • Optionally auto-delete using Remove-AzSnapshot -ResourceGroupName RG -SnapshotName Name

Reference List

• Configure and Manage Azure NFS File Share Snapshots (preview)

• Understand Azure NetApp Files snapshot-based data protection

• Azure VM backup – Database consistent snapshots

• Azure Backup services overview

• File-Snapshot Backups for Database Files in Azure

Hope this helps. and please feel free to reach out if you have any further questions.

Thank you , But Can you provide me steps to use only azure CLI to do that ? Like first list all the snapshots using CLI command and then from that select snapshot to find out that if that have been in use for the last 30 days. What specific attribute represents that the snapshot has not been used to create a new resource say managed disk or VM . Also other than azure automation runbook can i do that , with azure logic function , and using Azure backup service. If yes then what will be the steps . I would have used chat gpt , but I need some legit source like a professional to answer these .

Thank you so much for the help.

Hello Piyush, Hope this helps. If you need any further assistance, please feel free to reach out. If you find the information helpful, kindly accept the answer and consider upvoting it, as this may help other community members facing similar issues. Thank you.

One more question is that , Is there any documentation page available on Azure which can help understand the output generated by Azure CLI commands ?