Snapshots are often created for short-term protection before changes to a VM or disk, but many remain in the environment far beyond their intended lifespan. Over time, this leads to an accumulation of snapshots that are no longer associated with any active resource or retained for operational need.Since Azure does not enforce automatic expiration or lifecycle policies for snapshots, they can persist indefinitely and continue to incur monthly storage charges. This inefficiency is especially common in development environments, migration efforts, or manual backup workflows that lack centralized cleanup.Snapshots older than 30–90 days, especially those not tied to a documented backup strategy or workload, are strong candidates for review and removal.