Automatically deleting blobs in Azure Blob Storage

Wed, 13 May 2026 10:00:00 +0200

Recently I worked on a task where I needed to remove uploaded blobs after a certain amount of time. My mind immediately went to Azure Blob storage lifecycle management, but the problem appeared to be a bit more nuanced than I first thought.

With lifecycle management you can define rules that automatically perform actions on blobs. Each rule consists of conditions, actions, and filters.

Conditions: Specify if the rule applies based on when a blob was created, last modified, or last accessed.
Actions: Specify which action to apply. This can be changing the blob’s tier or deleting it.
Filters: Limits the rule to a subset of blobs. By default it applies to all blobs, but filters allow for filtering for certain tags or prefixes.

A common use case is to automatically clean up temporary data. You’d create a rule that filters on a prefix like tmp/, set a condition to match blobs that haven’t been modified in 30 days, and set the action to delete. You can also combine actions in a single rule, for example first transitioning a blob from hot to cool after 7 days and then deleting it after 90 days. As long as your blobs are organized by prefix or tagged consistently, this works great.

Lifecycle Management on Erwin van den Bogaard

Automatically deleting blobs in Azure Blob Storage