Recovering our Default Azure Directory

I would treat this as an identity/tenant recovery issue first, not only as a DNS subscription issue.

The safest approach is:

1. Identify the tenant ID that owns the DNS subscription. You may be able to find it from old invoices, Azure emails, subscription exports, deployment records, or any user who previously accessed it.

2. Check whether any current user in your organization still exists in that tenant and has Global Administrator, Privileged Role Administrator, or at least subscription Owner access.

3. If the tenant uses a custom domain that your organization owns, verify who controls DNS for that domain. That can matter for proving ownership, but do not remove or re-add domains without understanding impact.

4. If no admin exists or you cannot access the tenant, open a Microsoft support case for tenant/subscription ownership recovery. Even with a Basic plan, billing/subscription/account access issues usually have support paths separate from paid technical support.

5. Avoid deleting directories, moving domains, or changing DNS zones until support confirms the recovery path, because those actions can make ownership proof harder.

For the DNS workload itself, once access is restored, I would document the tenant ID, subscription ID, break-glass accounts, billing owner, and emergency access process so this does not happen again.

Docs:

https://learn.microsoft.com/entra/fundamentals/users-restore

https://learn.microsoft.com/entra/identity/role-based-access-control/security-emergency-access