I can't speak to any specifics, but asynchronous behavior, including deletions, is very common in large distributed systems, and Azure I'd wager is no exception

I can't speak to any specifics, but asynchronous behavior, including deletions, is very common in large distributed systems, and Azure I'd wager is no exception. Update: I'd forgotten that even filesystems often do a soft delete. https://lwn.net/Articles/462437/ https://lwn.net/Articles/462437/