Domain 2 of 5 · Chapter 3 of 3

Files and Blob Storage

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Included in this chapter:

  • Two storage shapes: blob containers vs file shares
  • Access tiers: Hot, Cool, Cold, Archive
  • Archiving and rehydration
  • Protecting blob data: soft delete, snapshots, versioning
  • Lifecycle management and Azure Files protection
  • Exam-pattern recognition

Blob access tiers compared

DimensionHotCoolColdArchive
Online or offlineOnline (millisecond read)Online (millisecond read)Online (millisecond read)Offline, must rehydrate to read
Optimized forFrequent accessInfrequent accessRare access, still fast retrievalRare access, hours-latency OK
Minimum retention (early-deletion penalty)None30 days90 days180 days
Storage costHighestLower than HotLower than CoolLowest
Access (read) costLowestHigher than HotHigher than CoolHighest + retrieval
Read latencyMillisecondsMillisecondsMillisecondsUp to 15 h (standard rehydrate)

Decision tree

Accessed frequently?reads and writes oftenYesNoHot tierno minimum retentionNeed millisecond reads?vs hours-latency tolerableYes (online)NoRarely accessed?infrequent vs very rareArchive tieroffline, 180-day minmust rehydrate to readInfrequentVery rareCool tier30-day minimum retentionCold tier90-day minimum retention
Cheat sheet

Cheat sheet

  • Blob Storage holds objects in containers; Azure Files holds a mountable SMB/NFS share
  • Access tiers apply to block blobs only, set per blob, and trade storage cost for read cost
  • Hot, Cool, and Cold are online; Archive is offline and must be rehydrated before any read
  • Each tier below Hot has a minimum retention: Cool 30, Cold 90, Archive 180 days
  • Rehydrate from Archive with Set Blob Tier (in place) or Copy Blob (to a new blob)
  • Standard rehydration takes up to 15 hours; High priority under 1 hour for objects under 10 GB
  • Blob soft delete recovers a deleted or overwritten blob for 1 to 365 days
  • Blob soft delete does NOT restore a deleted container. That needs container soft delete
  • No soft delete recovers a deleted storage account. Only a resource lock prevents it
  • Snapshots are manual point-in-time copies; versioning captures every write automatically
  • Versioning keeps one current version and immutable previous versions, created on every write
  • Don't enable versioning on frequently overwritten data without managing cost
  • Lifecycle management is a JSON rule set that auto-tiers or deletes blobs by age
  • A lifecycle policy can target current versions, previous versions, and snapshots independently
  • Lifecycle policies move data colder only. They cannot rehydrate from Archive
  • Azure Files serves SMB or NFS, but one share uses exactly one protocol
  • NFS file shares require the SSD (premium) tier; HDD (standard) supports SMB only
  • Azure Files snapshots are incremental, read-only, up to 200 per share and 10-year retention
  • Soft delete for Azure Files protects a deleted share and is a storage-account setting on by default
  • When lifecycle conditions overlap, the least expensive action wins
  • Lifecycle rules for previous versions and snapshots age by creation time
  • A sync group has exactly one cloud endpoint and at most one server endpoint per registered server
  • A Windows Server can register with only one Storage Sync Service at a time
  • With multiple endpoints on one volume, the largest free-space policy wins
  • Azure Backup centrally protects Azure file shares with full or item-level restore

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References

  1. Introduction to Azure Blob Storage
  2. Plan for an Azure Files deployment
  3. Access tiers for blob data - Azure Storage
  4. Blob rehydration from the archive tier
  5. Soft delete for blobs - Azure Storage
  6. Blob versioning - Azure Storage
  7. Azure Blob Storage lifecycle management overview