Hey Maru, yes during interactive. denoise drops when you store current vfb that has denoise applied.
Yes, the behavior is not consistent between final and IR rendering mode, but it's always been that way.
If you're rendering in final mode, the denoised result is stored in render history and can be retrieved anytime (using denoiser on/off checkbox, it works on current final render displayed in the VFB and final renders saved to history).
In IR mode, denoiser is only available for the actively running render in the VFB, but will
not be saved to history, hence can't be retrieved form history. But will show a final render with denoised result in A/B history mode if that has been saved to history. And can't be switched on/off in the VFB window.
It's a bit confusing but the rule is if you want to save denoised renders to history and be able to retrieve the denoised result you have to use final render mode.
Ideally, it should always be the same behavior, preferably the one from final render mode so it works in all situations.