In this Azure tutorial, we will discuss about Azure storage types. Apart from this, we will also discuss on below topics
- Azure Storage Account
- Azure storage type for VM
- Azure Storage Pricing
- Azure Storage Explorer
Table of Contents
- Azure storage types
- Azure Storage Account
- Azure storage type for VM
- Azure Storage Pricing
- Azure Storage Explorer
Azure storage types
Before discussing the Azure storage types, let’s discuss a little bit about what is azure storage account.
Azure Storage Account
An Azure storage account is something that contains all the Azure storage data objects. The Azure storage data objects are blobs, files, queues, tables, disks, etc.
Once you store the data inside the Azure storage account that becomes more secure, scalable, durable, and highly available.
Azure storage account helps you provide a unique namespace for your Azure storage data and another important thing is that with the help of the unique namespace your Azure storage data is accessible from anywhere in the world over HTTP or HTTPS.
To create a storage account in the Azure portal, you can refer to my article on Create storage account.
Below are different storage types in Azure
- File
- Blob
- Queue
- Disks
- Table
Azure File storage
This storage feature offers regular file shares in the cloud or on-premises environments.
The Azure file storage features use the standard Server Message Block (SMB) protocol.
This storage is also designed to support the file shares between the virtual machines or can store files there that can be accessed from different Virtual Machines.
This act like a local file share. It is a great solution for moving your local file shares to the cloud as well as “lifting and shifting” data to the cloud.
Azure File Storage Pricing
For LRS Redundancy, the price for Azure file storage is as below
LRS Redundancy
| Premium | Standard | |
| GiB/month | ₹22.209 per provisioned GiB | ₹4.363 per used GiB |
| Snapshots GiB/month | ₹18.507 perused GiB | ₹4.363 per used GiB |
Operations and Data Transfer prices
| Standard | Premium | |
| Put, Create Container Operations (per 10,000) | ₹0.9915 | Free |
| List Operations (per 10,000) | ₹0.9915 | Free |
| All other operations except Delete, which is free (per 10,000) | ₹0.0992 | Free |
| Geo-Replication Data Transfer (per GiB) | N/A | Free |
ZRS Redundancy
| Premium | Standard | |
| GiB/month | N/A | ₹5.453 per used GiB |
| Snapshots GiB/month | N/A | ₹5.453 per used GiB |
Operations and Data Transfer prices
| Standard | Premium | |
| Put, Create Container Operations (per 10,000) | ₹1.2394 | Free |
| List Operations (per 10,000) | ₹0.9915 | Free |
| All other operations except Delete, which is free (per 10,000) | ₹0.0992 | Free |
| Geo-Replication Data Transfer (per GiB) | N/A | Free |
For more details, you can refer to Microsoft official site
Azure Blob storage
Azure Blob storage allows the storage of unstructured data. We can store massive data like text files, images, audio, videos, media files, application installers, etc.
These data can be accessed from any place via protocols like HTTP or HTTPS.
Azure Blob storage allows for storing data for disaster recovery, backup and archiving, videos for streaming, and storing data for shared access.
Types of Azure Blob Storage
There are three types of Azure blob storage
Block Blobs storage
These are small blocks with unique IDS. One block blob can contain up to 50,000 blocks.
Append Blobs storage
We cannot update or delete any existing blocks. In Block Blobs storage unique IDs are not kept secret but Here all the unique IDs are kept secret.
Page Blobs storage
The maximum size of a page blob is 8 TB.
Azure Blobs storage Pricing
For LRS Redundancy, the price for Azure Block Blobs storage is as below
| Premium | HOT | COOL | ARCHIVE | |
| First 50 terabyte (TB) / month | ₹13.88022 per GB | ₹1.3220 per GB | ₹1.00467 per GB | ₹0.13220 per GB |
| Next 450 TB / month | ₹13.88022 per GB | ₹1.2691 per GB | ₹1.00467 per GB | ₹0.13220 per GB |
| Over 500 TB / month | ₹13.88022 per GB | ₹1.2162 per GB | ₹1.00467 per GB | ₹0.13220 per GB |
Operations and Data Transfer prices
| Premium | HOT | COOL | ARCHIVE | |
| Write operations (per 10,000)1 | ₹1.6194 | ₹3.6353 | ₹6.6097 | ₹7.9316 |
| List and Create Container Operations | ₹4.6268 | ₹3.6353 | ₹3.6353 | ₹3.6353 |
| Read operations (per 10,000) | ₹0.1296 | ₹0.2909 | ₹0.6610 | ₹396.5775 |
| Archive High Priority Read (per 10,000)5 | ₹4,626.7375 | |||
| All other Operations (per 10,000), except for Delete, which is free | ₹0.1296 | ₹0.2909 | ₹0.2909 | ₹0.2909 |
| Data Retrieval (per GB) | Free | Free | ₹0.6610 | ₹1.5864 |
| Archive High Priority Retrieval (per GB)5 | ₹9.2535 | |||
| Data Write (per GB)4 | Free | Free | Free | Free |
For more details, you can refer to Microsoft’s official site
Azure Queue storage
Azure Queue storage is a service that can store large numbers of messages that can be accessed from anywhere in the world using HTTP or HTTPS.
The size of a queue message can be up to 64 KB.
Azure Queue storage Pricing
| STORAGE CAPACITY | LRS | GRS | RA-GRS |
| Storage in GB/Month | ₹3.2718 per GB | ₹4.3624 per GB | ₹5.4530 per GB |
Operations and data transfer prices
| LRS | GRS | RA-GRS | |
| Queue Class 1* operations (in 10,000) | ₹0.0238 | ₹0.0238 | ₹0.0238 |
| Queue Class 2** operations (in 10,000) | ₹0.0238 | ₹0.0238 | ₹0.0238 |
| Geo-replication data transfer (per GB) | N/A | Free | Free |
Azure Disks storage
This is a virtual hard disk that behaves almost similarly to a physical hard disk.
Azure Disks storage is of two types
- Managed
- Unmanaged
In the case of managed disks storage, we can have one storage account for each Azure region.
In the case of Unmanaged disks storage, We need to have storage accounts that can hold the disks for the Azure virtual machine.
There are four types of managed disks
- Ultra SSD Managed Disks
- Premium SSD Managed Disks
- Standard SSD Managed Disks
- Standard HDD Managed Disks
Azure Disks storage pricing
| DISK SIZE | PRICE PER MONTH | 1-YEAR PRICE | IOPS PER DISK | THROUGHPUT PER DISK PRICE | |
| P1 | 4 GiB | ₹55.53 | N/A | Up to 3,500 Provisioned 120 | Up to 170 MB/second Provisioned 25 MB/second |
| P2 | 8 GiB | ₹111.05 | N/A | Up to 3,500 Provisioned 120 | Up to 170 MB/second Provisioned 25 MB/second |
| P3 | 16 GiB | ₹222.09 | N/A | Up to 3,500 Provisioned 120 | Up to 170 MB/second Provisioned 25 MB/second |
| P4 | 32 GiB | ₹348.96 | N/A | Up to 3,500 Provisioned 120 | Up to 170 MB/second Provisioned 25 MB/second |
| P6 | 64 GiB | ₹674.65 | N/A | Up to 3,500 Provisioned 120 | Up to 170 MB/second Provisioned 25 MB/second |
| P10 | 128 GiB | ₹1,302.76 | N/A | Up to 3,500 Provisioned 120 | Up to 170 MB/second Provisioned 25 MB/second |
| P15 | 256 GiB | ₹2,512.47 | N/A | Up to 3,500 Provisioned 120 | Up to 170 MB/second Provisioned 25 MB/second |
| P20 | 512 GiB | ₹4,839.57 | N/A | Up to 3,500 Provisioned 120 | Up to 170 MB/second Provisioned 25 MB/second |
| P30 | 1 TiB | ₹8,934.24 | ₹8,487.8604 | 5,000 | 200 MB/second |
| P40 | 2 TiB | ₹17,121.95 | ₹16,265.1854 | 7,500 | 250 MB/second |
| P50 | 4 TiB | ₹32,755.04 | ₹31,120.3175 | 7,500 | 250 MB/second |
| P60 | 8 TiB | ₹62,532.35 | ₹59,404.0047 | 16,000 | 500 MB/second |
| P70 | 16 TiB | ₹1,19,109.41 | ₹1,13,156.78 | 18,000 | 750 MB/second |
| P80 | 32 TiB | ₹2,38,218.16 | ₹2,26,308.0522 | 20,000 | 900 MB/second |
For more details, you can refer to Microsoft official site
Azure Table storage
The Azure Table storage allows the storage of structured data. It stores NoSQL data.
This service allows for the storage of structured, non-relational data.
Azure Table Storage Pricing
| STORAGE CAPACITY | LRS | GRS | RA-GRS | ZRS | GZRS | RA-GZRS |
| Storage in GB/Month | ₹3.2718 per GB | ₹4.3624 per GB | ₹5.4530 p GB | ₹4.0848 p GB | N/A p GB | N/A p GB |
Operations and Data Transfer prices
It is ₹0.023795 per 10,000 transactions for tables
Azure storage type for VM
Let’s discuss here the Azure storage types for the virtual machine.
Microsoft provides three types of storage for the virtual machine
- Standard HDD Storage
- Standard SSD Storage
- Premium SSD Storage
Standard HDD Storage
- Standard HDD Storage is like a traditional hard disk model and is offered as unmanaged Standard HDD storage.
- For standard HDD storage, Microsoft charges based on the amount of storage consumed.
Standard SSD Storage
- Standard SSD storage is like Solid State Storage and is offered as Managed disks.
- For Standard SSD storage, Microsoft charges based on the amount of storage allocated.
Premium SSD Storage
- Premium SSD storage is also like Solid State Storage.
- Only Premium Storage capable virtual machines support attaching Premium SSD Storage to them.
One important thing you need to keep in mind is that all Managed disk is charged by the amount of space allocated, but the Unmanaged HDD storage is only charged for the amount of space consumed.
These are the four Azure storage types provided by Microsoft in case of the virtual machines.
Azure Storage Pricing
We have discussed the pricing details for each storage. Check out the complete information on Azure Storage Pricing now.
Azure Storage Explorer
Check out an end-to-end tutorial on Azure Storage Explorer now.
You may like the following Azure tutorials:
- Azure storage architecture
- Azure storage tiers
- How to backup Azure storage account (Azure Portal)
- How to Upload and Download File From Azure Blob Storage Using C# and PowerShell
- Azure Storage Queue vs Service Bus
Conclusion
In this tutorial, we learned the below things:
- Azure Storage Account
- Azure storage type for VM
- Azure Storage Pricing
- Azure Storage Explorer
I hope, you have enjoyed this article !!!