If you want to keep earlier versions of a blob, what feature should you enable?

To retain earlier versions of a blob in Azure, the appropriate feature to enable is versioning. Blob versioning allows you to automatically save and maintain multiple versions of a blob as it changes over time. Whenever a blob is modified or overwritten, a new version is created, which means that you can access and restore previous versions whenever necessary. This is particularly useful for scenarios where you might need to roll back to an earlier state of your data due to accidental deletions, overwrites, or any other form of data loss.

In contrast, other features serve different purposes: Snapshots provide a point-in-time view of a blob, allowing you to create a read-only copy of the blob as it exists at that moment, but they do not automatically enable the retention of multiple versions as versioning does. Soft delete protects blobs from accidental deletion by preserving them for a configurable retention period, allowing recovery, but it does not enable version management or multiple versions of the same blob. Access control governs permissions for who can perform actions on the blobs but does not affect the storage of multiple versions.

By utilizing versioning, users can efficiently manage historical data changes, ensuring that earlier versions are preserved and can be accessed when needed, supporting data integrity and recovery strategies in Azure Storage