Automatically delete blobs after a given time
latest Azure update 12th June 2018
This feature is now available in public preview so you might want to check out
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-blob-storage-lifecycle-management-public-preview/
Quite often I use blob storage for temporary images or other files that should be deleted after a given time. In the beginning I wrote a script that iterates through all blobs to delete those with a last modified time older than a couple of weeks. This was hard to maintain and sometimes I forgot to run the script for a while. So I wrote:
- Blob trigger that creates an entry with expiration time in Table Storage
- Scheduled trigger that removes old blobs
You can deploy the Functions to your subscription / resource group by clicking the button
- Create an Azure Function resource
- A consumption hosting plan (pay by usage)
- Add Application Insights for monitoring
- Configure source code deployment from this GitHub repository (master branch)
- App Name a unique name for the Azure Function
- Storage Account Name the name of an existing storage account
- Container Name the blob container that should be monitored for deletion
- Minutes to live the live time of blobs before they get deleted (default 30 days = 43200)
- DeleteBlobCronExpression a cron expression to schedule the timer trigger (default once a day)
You can always change all app settings after deployment in the Azure portal.
I wrote this project mainly to experiment with the 'Deploy to Azure button' and learn about ARM templates.
It is not fully tested and should not be used for critical production scenarios. Please create issues of fork to contribute.