Question

Your team runs a multi-stage YAML pipeline in Azure DevOps that deploys to a production Environment. Compliance requires that every production deployment record be retained for at least two years for audit purposes, but the organization's project-level pipeline retention policy is set to keep runs for only 30 days. You notice that after 30 days, some production deployment history is being purged. What is the most reliable way to ensure the required deployment records are preserved without disabling retention cleanup for all runs?

Accepted Answer

Manually or programmatically apply a retention lease (via the 'Retain' setting) to the specific pipeline runs that performed production deployments.

Answer

Increase the project-level 'Days to keep runs' setting to 730 days so all pipeline runs are retained for two years.

Answer

Enable the 'Retain associated artifacts' checkbox on the production stage so deployment history follows the artifact lifetime.

Answer

Add a branch policy on the main branch that prevents deletion of any deployment associated with production.