Well, in this article, we will quickly discuss all Azure storage tiers. Along with that, we will also discuss the quick ways to switch between storage tiers in Azure.
Table of Contents
Azure storage tiers
Basically, Azure storage offers three types of access tiers
- Hot access tiers
- Cool access tiers
- Archive access tiers
Hot access tiers
- Hot access tier is used in case of the data that are frequently used or read and written very frequently.
- For this tier, the storage costs are higher compared to cool and Archive access tiers but the access cost is less.
- The hot access tier can be set at the account level.
Cool access tiers
- Cool access tier is used in case of data that is not used very frequently.
- Here in the case of cool access tiers, the storage cost is less and the access cost is more compared to Hot access tiers.
- Intended for short-term backup and disaster recovery data and the data will remain here at least for 30 days.
- Lower SLA (99%) compare to the hot access tier(99.99%).
- Here the price calculation is based on per GB data.
Archive access tiers
- The archive access tier is used to store various rarely used data or archival data, etc.
- This service has the lowest storage cost compared to hot and cool access tiers. This is the cheapest one in terms of storage cost but the data retrieval costs are more.
- Data will remain in the archive tier for at least 180 days.
- Intended for Long-term backup, secondary backup, and archival data.
These are the three data tiers that are supported in General Purpose storage V2 and Blob storage accounts.
How to switch between storage tiers in Azure
We can switch between the storage tiers in Azure. Let’s discuss on what are the steps to switch between the storage tiers.
One more important thing to note here is that the Hot and Cool tiers can be enabled at the storage account level or at the blob level but the Archive tier can only be enabled at the blob level.
To switch the storage access tier, follow the below steps
Step-1: Login to the Azure portal and search for the storage accounts then click on the Storage accounts (classic).
Step-2: On the Storage accounts (classic) page, click on the storage account for which you want to switch the storage tiers.
Step-3: On the Storage account page, click on the Configuration link from the left navigation.
Now select the Access tier (default) option from Hot to Cool and then click on the Save button to apply the changes.
Step-4: Now to cross-check the changes are done successfully, you can browse the storage account and click on the Configuration link to check the option. You can see below the Access tier has been changed from Hot to Cool.
Step-5: To switch the tier of a specific blob inside the storage account, click on the Containers under the Blob service
Step-6: Click on the container name and select the blob from inside the container and then click on the Change tier from the top menu or from the (…) three-dot button.
Step-7: Now on the Change tier window, select the appropriate tier from the Access tier option and click on the Save button to apply the changes,
Step-8: If you want to change the tier to Archive, you will get a warning message “Setting the access tier to Archive will make your blob inaccessible until it is rehydrated back to Hot or Cool, which may take several hours”. You can select the Archive option and then click on the Save button to apply the changes.
You can see below the Access tier option has been changed to Archive for a specific blob inside the storage account
You may also like following the below articles
- Azure storage architecture
- Azure Storage Queue vs Service Bus
- How to backup Azure storage account (Azure Portal)
- Azure storage types
Wrapping Up
Well, in this article, we discussed Azure storage tiers. Now, it’s your turn to decide which tier you wish to go with based on your requirement. Thanks for reading this article !!