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Data Retention

The ACX Lab is a non-production lab environment. Data retention policies are designed to keep the lab clean and resources available for all users.

Resource Expiration

All resources in the ACX Lab have a 90-day default lifespan from the date of creation. Resources are tracked via expiry tags (expires in YYYY-MM-DD format).

Automatic Cleanup

A nightly cleanup job runs automatically to identify and remove expired resources. The process:

  1. Scans all resources for the expires tag
  2. Resources past their expiration date are marked for deletion
  3. After a 7-day grace period, resources are permanently removed

Expiration Timeline

Event Action
Resource created expires tag set to 90 days from creation date
14 days before expiry Email notification sent to resource owner
7 days before expiry Second email notification
Expiration date Resource marked for cleanup
Nightly (after expiry + 7 days) Resource is automatically deleted by cleanup job

Extending Resource Lifespan

To keep resources beyond 90 days, update the expires tag before the expiration date:

az tag update --resource-id <resource-id> \
  --operation merge \
  --tags expires=2025-09-30

Or update the tag in the Azure portal:

  1. Navigate to your resource
  2. Click Tags in the left menu
  3. Update the expires tag value
  4. Click Save

See Extend or Modify Access for more details.

Account Retention

Account Type Retention After Access Expires
Entra guest account Disabled after 14 days, deleted after 30 days
On-prem AD account Disabled after 14 days, deleted after 30 days
Azure RBAC assignments Removed immediately on access expiry

Data on VMs

!!! danger "No automatic backups" Lab VMs do not have automatic backups. When a VM is deleted — whether manually, due to expiration, or due to a failure — all data on that VM is permanently lost.

Recommendations

  • Do not store important data only on lab VMs
  • Use Git repositories for code and configuration
  • Use Azure Storage accounts for data files (these are also subject to the expires tag but can be extended independently)
  • Use your corporate OneDrive for documents
  • Export and save any experiment results before your resources expire

AKS Namespace Data

When your AKS namespace is deleted:

  • All deployments, pods, services, and configs in the namespace are removed
  • PersistentVolumeClaims and their underlying volumes are deleted
  • Secrets and ConfigMaps are removed

Back up important Kubernetes manifests to a Git repository.

Log Retention

Log Type Retention Period
Azure Activity logs 90 days (Azure default)
VM boot diagnostics Retained while VM exists
AKS container logs 30 days (Log Analytics workspace)
Automation runbook job logs 30 days

Compliance Notes

  • The ACX Lab is a non-production environment
  • Do not store customer data, PII, or production credentials in the lab
  • All lab data is subject to Microsoft's internal data handling policies
  • Lab resources may be audited for compliance at any time