Describe and manage Azure Blob Storage access tiers

• 8 minutes

Now that you reviewed several cost-optimization options, you can explore Azure Blob Storage access tiers in more depth. You recognize their potential in lowering the storage usage costs, but you also realize that their improper use might actually result in increased storage charges. In this unit, you learn about some general rules governing access-tier behaviors. You also identify some of the caveats that should help you optimize their benefits.

Azure Blob Storage supports four access tiers:

• Hot tier: An online tier that's optimized for storing data that's accessed or modified frequently. This tier has the highest storage costs, but the lowest access costs.

• Cool tier: An online tier that's optimized for storing data that's infrequently accessed or modified. This tier has lower storage costs than the hot tier, but its access costs are higher.

• Cold tier: An online tier that's optimized for storing data that's infrequently accessed or modified. This tier has lower storage costs than the cool tier, but its access costs are higher.

• Archive tier: An offline tier that’s optimized for storing data that’s accessed infrequently or not at all. This tier has the lowest storage costs, but the highest access costs.

The term infrequently isn't objective. As a general guidance, you should consider using the cool tier if you don't anticipate needing to delete or move the blob to a different tier for at least 30 consecutive days. You can consider the cold tier if you don't anticipate needing to delete or move the blob for at least 90 consecutive days. Consider using the archive tier if that period is at least 180 days. These values result from the pricing model, which imposes an early deletion charge. This charge applies if the blob is either deleted or moved from the cool or archive tier before the tier-specific period passes. That period is 30 days for the cool tier, 90 days for the cold tier, and 180 days for the archive tier.

An early deletion charge is prorated according to the number of days remaining in the tier-specific period. For example, if a blob is assigned to the cool tier and then deleted after 20 days, the early deletion charge represents the cost of storing the blob for 10 days (30 minus 20) in the cool tier. Similarly, if a blob is assigned to the archive tier and then moved to the cool or hot tier after 100 days, the early deletion charge represents the cost of storing the blob for 80 days (180 minus 100) in the archive tier.

Describe the access tier management model for blobs

When you choose between hot, cool, cold, and archive access tiers, there are additional factors to consider. It’s also helpful to understand the different access tiers' management models.

In addition to pricing differences, blobs have different availability Service Level Agreements (SLA). The archive, cold, and cool tiers offer the same durability, throughput, and storage access latency characteristics. Their retrieval time is in the range of milliseconds. The hot and cool tiers also support all redundancy options.

The hot, cool, cold, or archive access tier can be assigned to a blob directly during its upload. Alternatively, hot, cool or cold access tiers (but not archive) can be inferred based on the access tier specified as the default tier on the storage account level. However, any explicit tier assignment takes precedence over the inferred one.

An archive tier doesn't allow you to read or modify the content of a blob directly. However, you do have access to its metadata, including index tags. To access the blob's content, you can assign it to the hot, cool, or cold tier to trigger the process referred to as rehydration. Alternatively, you can invoke the Copy Blob operation to create a copy of the blob in the hot, cool, or cold tier.

Storage accounts using the archive tier must be configured with the LRS, GRS, or RA-GRS redundancy options. The archive tier doesn’t support zone redundancy, precluding setting the redundancy to ZRS, GZRS, or RA-GZRS.