This inefficiency occurs when backup data persists longer than intended due to misaligned or outdated retention policies. It often arises when retention requirements change over time, but older recovery points are not evaluated or cleaned up accordingly. In some cases, manually configured backups or legacy policies remain in place even after operational or compliance needs have been reduced.

As a result, backup storage continues to grow and incur cost without delivering additional recovery value.

This inefficiency occurs when a protected resource (such as a virtual machine, database, or file share) is decommissioned without explicitly stopping backup protection. In these cases, Azure Backup continues to retain existing recovery points in the vault until the retention policy expires. Although the source resource no longer exists, backup storage remains allocated and billable, resulting in unnecessary ongoing costs.

This pattern is common when infrastructure is deleted outside of a formal decommissioning process or when backup ownership is unclear.