SOLVED: 3 Minute Introduction To Get Started with Azure Blob Storage Including Pricing

Understanding Azure Blob storage is often made confusing by the term BLOB itself and the large number of options Microsoft offers.  So lets clear your mind with some to-the-point straight talk.

What is Blob Storage?

Blob is just an acronym for BINARY LARGE OBJECT and what they are is just files that are stored inside something (like a folder).  You access blob storage typically through a browser URL (like https://<Your-Azure-Account>/blob.core.windows.net/<Container>/<Blob> ) or an application like Veeam backup

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How Is Blob Storage Structured?

Your Azure Account can have Many Azure Blob Storage CONTAINERS (just think Folders) and each Blob Container can contain many files.

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What Are the Different Types of Azure Blobs & How Much Do The Cost?

These prices are in US dollars and are for the base “Locally Redundant Storage”.

	Access Performance	Storage Minimums	Storage Cost  Per GB per Month	Write Cost per 10,000 Operations	Read Cost Per 10,000 Operations	Data Retrieval Cost /GB	Data Write Cost /GB	Cost per 10K List or Creates	Delete Costs
Premium	High	n/a	$.0975	$.0114	$.0010	$.0010	$.0010	$.0010	no chg
Hot	Medium	n/a	$.0200	$.0550	$.0044	no chg	no Chg	$.0550	no chg
Cool	Low	30 Days	$.0150	$.1000	$.0100	$.0100	$.0025	$.0550	no chg
Archive	15 hrs	180 Days	$.0025	$.1100	$5.5000	$.0220	no Chg	$.0550	no chg

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What Are the Different Redundancy Options for Bob Storage?

Acronym	Name	Details
LRS	locally redundant storage	Designed to provide at least 99.999999999 % (11 9’s) durability of objects over a given year by keeping multiple copies of your data in one datacenter.
ZDS	zone redundant storage	Designed to provide at least 99.9999999999 % (12 9’s) durability of objects over a given year by keeping multiple copies of your data across multiple datacenters or across regions.
GRS	geographically redundant storage	Designed to provide at least 99.99999999999999 % (16 9’s) durability of objects over a given year by keeping multiple copies of the data in one region, and asynchronously replicating to a second region.
RGRS	read-access geographically redundant storage	Designed for to provide at least 99.99999999999999 % (16 9’s) durability of objects over a given year and 99.99 % read availability by allowing read access from the second region used for GRS.

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What Are the Three Different Types of Blobs?

1. BLOCK BLOBS – typical files  (.DOCX, .JPGS, .MP4’s…) – has maximum single file size of 200GB
2. PAGE BLOBS – file that have parts updated – think about database files where some tiny record in the middle of the file needs to be updated, like daily backups – A single PAGE BLOB file can be 1TB in size
3. APPEND BLOBS – files that need to be added to frequently – think about log files that are constantly being added to

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How To Recall Data From an Archived Blob?

To recall data from an archived Blob, you need to convert it to a COOL, HOT or PREMIUM Blob before you can see it.  Archive is for truly Archived data.

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Want More Blob Storage Straight Talk?

We found this video to be quite helpful.