Microsoft Azure Administrator (AZ104) 2025 – 400 Free Practice Questions to Pass the Exam

The first step before deleting a Recovery Services vault that has protected virtual machines is to stop the backup of each backup item. This action is critical because the Recovery Services vault is specifically used to manage and store backup data for those protected items. Stopping the backup prepares the environment by ensuring that the vault is no longer actively managing or monitoring the virtual machines.

Stopping the backup essentially disassociates the virtual machines from the backup process, which is necessary before you can proceed to safely delete the vault itself and its associated backup data. Once the backups are stopped, you can then follow up with additional steps, such as deleting the backup data and ultimately deleting the vault. This sequence helps ensure data integrity and compliance with backup policies.