Backup item whose source resource no longer exists
A Recovery Services backup item still being retained and billed after the resource it protects has been deleted.
Why it happens
Azure Backup charges a per-protected-instance fee every month for as long as an item is retained, and that charge does not stop when the resource being backed up is deleted: the recovery points remain and the meter keeps running. The fee is $10 a month for an Azure VM, $25 for SQL Server in a VM and $80 for SAP HANA, so a handful of forgotten items is real money indefinitely. Microsoft recommends deleting backup items whose primary data source no longer exists. Whether the source still exists is answered by Azure itself, through a join inside the Resource Graph query, rather than by looking in the snapshot: the snapshot holds only the types enabled rules need, so a live resource of an uncollected type would otherwise be reported as an orphan. Items in soft delete are excluded because Azure provides fourteen days of soft-delete retention free of charge.
What the agent does about it
A Recovery Services backup item still being retained and billed after the resource it protects has been deleted.
It will not fix this one
It reports this and takes no action. A check only earns the right to change something once the action behind it can re-read live state before it fires and knows the way back.
Related checks
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