blob storage Archives

Minimizing Azure Blob Storage Costs: Tips and Tricks

by Mark | Nov 9, 2020 | Azure, Azure Blobs, How To, Snapshot / Checkpoint, Storage Accounts

Maximizing cost savings on Azure Blob Storage and Files has become increasingly important as more businesses migrate their data to the cloud. In this article, we’ll discuss how utilizing Cloud Storage Manager can help you optimize Azure storage consumption and significantly reduce expenses. We’ll also explore various ways to identify and remove redundant data and manage your virtual machine snapshots effectively.

Uncovering Azure Blob Storage Consumption

A Comprehensive Scan with Cloud Storage Manager

By using Cloud Storage Manager, you can perform a full scan of all your Azure Subscriptions and Blob Storage Accounts, providing a clear overview of your Azure Blob Storage usage. This visibility allows you to identify potential areas where you can cut costs and better allocate resources.

Azure Blob Storage Locations

Not only could they easily see the amount of Azure Blob Storage in use, they could also see all the Microsoft Datacentres where they are using storage from the map tab.

How much blob storage are your VM snapshots consuming?

Azure Blob Storage Reporting

One of the easiest ways to start saving on your Azure Blob Storage is to find often forgotten about Azure Virtual Machine Snapshots.

Often snapshots are created and then forgotten about.

Simply go to the Reports Tab in Cloud Storage Manager and run the LIST OF AZURE SNAPSHOTS report.

From the reports, you can quickly see where you could apply an Azure Storage Lifecycle Management Policy, and move the files that havent been accessed to a lower storage Tier to save you money.

Azure Virtual Machine Snapshots: Out of Sight, Out of Mind

Once the Azure Snapshot report has been generated, simply open it up in excel to see all your Azure VM snapshots.

The report provides you with information including the name of the Azure snapshot, which subscription it resides in, the Azure Storage Account, the relevant Container, size of the Azure VM snapshot, when it was created, if its a managed or unmanaged disk, the Azure Resource Group, type of snapshot created and finally any Azure Tags if you have them.

From this report, we found that they had 1168 Azure VM snapshots lingering in their environment, some well over 3 years old.

Using a simple calculation in Excel using standard Azure storage costs, ($0.02750 per TB using azure blob storage pricing provided by Microsoft – IN $AUS.

Azure Pricing Calculator

Visit the Azure Pricing Calculator for pricing in your currency ) deleting all these snapshots saved the client just under $2,000 per month, an approximate saving of $24,000 a year.

Just running these two simple reports and then taking action on them

saved this client $33,600 in their yearly Azure Blob Storage Costs.

Managing Azure Files Consumption

Gaining Insights with Cloud Storage Manager

As organizations increasingly adopt Azure Files to replace on-premise file servers, it’s crucial to understand exactly how much data resides in your Azure Files.

Cloud Storage Manager can scan all your Azure Files across your tenancy, offering quick and easy insights into Azure Files consumption.

Identifying Cost-Saving Opportunities

With a clear view of your Azure Files consumption, you can identify opportunities to reduce costs by optimizing storage usage and eliminating unnecessary data.

Handling Unattached Azure VM Disks

Finding Unattached Disks with Cloud Storage Manager

Next on the list to reduce their Azure Storage costs, was finding unattached Azure Virtual Machine disks.

Again, this is often overlooked, to delete any disks no longer needed when decommissioning your Azure VMs.

Another standard report is run, this time All Unattached Disks.

Once the report has completed, again open it up in Microsoft Excel, and you can go through this data to see which Azure VM Unattached Disks can be deleted, further reducing your Azure Storage Costs.

Azure VM Storage Cost Savings

Now using the same quick costing formulas from before, we can see an estimated monthly Azure Storage cost for these unattached virtual machine disks.

Estimating Savings with the Azure Pricing Calculator

After running this report and using the Azure Cost Estimator (I used AUD pricing here) to get cloud storage pricing, we found that the client had over 110 unattached Azure Virtual Machine Disks.

Removing all these unattached disks saved them $800 per month, so around $9,600 per year.

Reduce your Microsoft Azure Storage Costs

In a follow-up blog post, we will then dig a little deeper into more Azure Storage cost-saving initiatives (looking to further reduce your Azure Blob and FIles storage pricing and costs) using the insights from Cloud Storage Manager.

Download a free trial of Cloud Storage Manager today and start saving money with your Azure Storage.

Azure Cost Optimisation Conclusion

Azure pricing is based on a pay-as-you-go model, where customers are only charged for the services and resources they consume. This allows for flexible and cost-effective cloud computing. There are a variety of services available in Azure, including computing, storage, networking, and security. The pricing for these services can vary based on factors such as the type of service, the amount of resources used, and the duration of use.

The Azure pricing calculator is a tool that can be used to estimate the cost of using Azure services. The calculator allows you to select the services you want to use, input the details of your usage, and see an estimated cost. This can help you to budget for your cloud computing needs and make informed decisions about which services to use and how much to use them.

In addition to the pricing calculator, there are also a number of pricing options and discounts available to help you save money on your Azure bill. For example, you can use reserved instances to save up to 72% on virtual machine costs, or you can take advantage of Azure Hybrid Benefit to use your existing Windows Server licenses in Azure and save up to 40%.

The Cloud Storage Manager is a tool that helps manage and optimize cloud storage costs for organizations using Azure storage. By providing insights into storage usage patterns, the tool helps organizations make informed decisions about storage capacity planning, tiering, and rightsizing, which can result in cost savings. With its easy-to-use interface and intuitive navigation, the Cloud Storage Manager simplifies the process of managing and optimizing cloud storage costs.

In addition to cost savings, the Cloud Storage Manager also offers benefits such as improved visibility into storage usage, with the ability to view storage costs by usage, users can identify and eliminate redundant, underutilized, or unnecessary storage resources.

Overall, the Cloud Storage Manager is a valuable tool for organizations using Azure storage. By helping to optimize cloud storage costs and streamline management of storage resources, the tool enables organizations to focus on delivering value to their customers, rather than managing storage resources.

How to find Azure BLOB files that haven’t been accessed

by Mark | Oct 26, 2020 | Azure, Azure Blobs, How To, Storage Accounts

Azure Blob storage has provided companies with a way to store almost limitless amount of data. But just like kids in a candy store this can get out of hand, and expensive. Being able to store as much data as you want is great, however it is something that can grow to a point where you are spending more on storage than you actually need.

Azure does provide a nice method of automatically shifting old or unused files to a lower access tier to save on cost, but this still means you are potentially holding onto files you don’t really need. I mean do you really need files you haven’t accessed in over 12 months? Sure there are certain industries that require files that are kept for 7+ years, but they are a special case.

If you don’t know how to create an Azure lifecycle policy to automatically move unused files to a lower access tier, check out our other post here: https://www.smikar.com/create-azure-storage-lifecycle-policy/

OK, so do I go about finding these files that haven’t been accessed in the last 3, 6, 12 or 36 months (3 years) without having to browse through each and every Azure Storage Account and Container?

So how do you find your Azure Blobs that havent been accessed in 3 months or more?

Azure Blob Storage Consumption Reports

Simple, use Cloud Storage Manager, and run one of the many usage reports.

Cloud Storage Manager has a number of reports you can run to get a better insight into exactly where all your Azure Blob Storage is being consumed, but let’s focus on the specific 4 reports that will tell us which Azure BLOB files haven’t been accessed in the last 3, 6, 12 or 36 months (3 years).

Once you’ve installed Cloud Storage Manager and allowed it some time to scan your Azure environment, browse to the Reports tab as shown here.

Azure Blobs not accessed within

First let’s run the Files not access in the last 12 months or longer report.

Right click on the report and select Run Report.

Azure Blobs not used Report

Once the report finishes, you will be shown a list of files that have not been accessed in the last 3 months or longer.

The report will show you which Subscription, Storage Account and Container the Azure BLOB file resides in. Not only that, but it will also tell you the object tier of the blob, whether that be hot or cool (archive files are excluded), the size of the file, the last time it was modified and of course the name of the file.

Here is an example of the report.

You can also export the report to Excel in order to adjust the report or present the information to others.

The same report may be executed to provide similar results but extending the criteria further out to search for files that haven’t been accessed in a longer timeframe, such as 6 months, 12 months or 3 years.

Using these reports, you can decide whether or not these files need to be retained, in which case you would move them to a lower access tier, either Cool or Archive for long-term retention, or even delete them if they are deemed unnecessary.

These reports are a great way to find files that haven’t been accessed in a long time and could provide an immediate cost saving associated with your Azure Storage consumption.

Cloud Storage Manager has free to trial. Start seeing insights in to your Azure Blob Storage consumption today.

Download a Free Trial and test it for yourself.

Free

Database size is limited to a maximum of 5MB.

Typically for small or personal environments usually consisting of 3 or less Azure Subscriptions and consuming under 30TB of Azure Blob Storage.

Advanced

Database size is limited to a maximum of 1GB.

For medium sized environments typically consisting of less than 10 Azure Subscriptions and consuming under 500TB of Azure Blob Storage.

Enterprise

Unlimited database size.

For use in large environments typically consisting of more than 10 Subscriptions and consuming more than 1PB of Azure Blob Storage.

Cloud Storage Manager is licensed based on the size of it’s database which includes information of each of your Azure Subscriptions, Azure Storage Accounts, Containers and finally each Blob.

Each version has the same great functions including scheduled scans of your Azure Blob Storage and reporting.

FREE DOWNLOAD

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Azure Storage Cost Saving FAQs

What is Azure Blob storage?

Azure Blob storage is a cloud-based storage solution provided by Microsoft Azure that allows users to store large amounts of unstructured data such as text or binary data.

Why is it important to manage Azure Blob storage?

While Azure Blob storage can store almost limitless amounts of data, it can also become expensive to maintain as data accumulates over time. Proper management of Azure Blob storage can help reduce storage costs and improve overall efficiency.

How can Cloud Storage Manager help manage Azure Blob storage?

Cloud Storage Manager provides a number of usage reports that can be used to identify which Azure Blob files haven’t been accessed in a certain period of time, such as 3, 6, 12 or 36 months. These reports allow users to make informed decisions about whether to retain, move to a lower access tier, or delete unnecessary files, which can help reduce storage costs.

What are the benefits of using Cloud Storage Manager?

By using Cloud Storage Manager, users can gain insights into their Azure Blob storage consumption and identify areas where they can optimize storage costs. The usage reports provided by Cloud Storage Manager are easy to use and allow users to quickly identify which files haven’t been accessed in a certain period of time, which can save time and effort compared to manually browsing through each Azure Storage Account and Container.

How can I try Cloud Storage Manager for myself?

Cloud Storage Manager offers a free trial that can be downloaded and installed. This allows users to see the insights provided by the software and determine if it is a good fit for their needs.

Azure Blob Storage Consumption Reports are an excellent way to find Azure BLOB files that haven’t been accessed in a long time, and they can provide immediate cost savings associated with your Azure Storage consumption. By using Cloud Storage Manager, you can run reports and gain insights into your Azure Blob Storage consumption, allowing you to make informed decisions on how to optimize your Azure storage.

In summary, using Azure Blob Storage Consumption Reports can help you find unused Azure BLOB files and reduce storage costs, providing a cost-effective solution for storing your data in Azure. Start using Cloud Storage Manager today to see insights into your Azure Blob Storage consumption and start saving costs.

What is Azure Blob Storage?

by Mark | Sep 23, 2020 | Azure, Azure Blobs, Blob Storage, Storage Accounts

Azure Blob Storage

Blobs, Blobs and more Blobs.

If you have ever had the need to store large amounts of files and data, then Azure’s Blob Storage is made for you.

Microsoft’s Azure Cloud provides huge benefits with not only their fantastic services, locations, availability and support, but also in their almost seemingly infinite capacity.

Azure Blob Storage is not only scalable, durable and almost always available it also provides flexibility to scale as your business requirements need.

A huge benefit to using Azure services is the pay as you go service model, that allows you to only pay for the services you consume. No more need to over provision local file servers hard drives for expected capacity, with Azure Blob Storage you upload your files to Azure and only pay for the space you need.

Azure Blob Storage

What is Azure Blob Storage?

Azure Blob Storage Overview

Azure Blob Storage (Blob stands for Binary Large Object) is storage provided by Microsoft’s Azure for unstructured data. Perfect for massive amounts of data. Example use cases are as a target for your log or analytics data, or Blob Storage can be used as a backup and archival location, and even things like files, pictures and music files. Basically Azure Blob Storage is a great dumping ground for huge amounts of your data. A Blob is actually a file which is stored in a directory like structure called a Container, then within an Azure Storage Account, and an Azure Resource Group and finally an Azure Subscription.

Access to each Azure Blob is provided by a HTTPS link directly to the Blob itself, meaning you can access the file from anywhere in the world with an internet connection. Obviously if you dont want the data exposed to the whole world, you can lock this down to meet your security needs.

Azure Blob Storage Hierachy

Concept	Description
Azure Resource Group	Used to contain related resources together for a solution. Logical collection of configuration items within Azure. Can contain Virtual Machines, Virtual Networks, and other items.
Azure Storage Accounts	Top level of Storage Services within Azure. Contains Blobs, Queue Tables, File Shares and Virtual Machine disks. Can be accessed from anywhere in the world with an internet connection. Default limit of 250 Storage Accounts per region and per subscription, with no limits on the number of Azure Storage Containers or Blobs contained within.
Azure Storage Containers	Used like a folder that contains all your blobs. Unlimited amount of Storage Containers per Storage Account.
Azure Blobs	Any type of file that is unstructured and stored within an Azure Storage Container. Can store large amounts of Blobs within each container, and these could be things like document files, images, and other multimedia.

Azure Blob Storage Availability

Additionally when creating your Azure Storage Account you can choose how much redundancy / availability for your Azure Blob Storage. While Microsoft provides an SLA on the uptime of your storage, choosing the correct availability of your Azure Storage Account will ensure your Azure Blobs are accessible in the event of failure.

LRS – Locally Redundant Storage – Keeps a synchronous copy of your Azure Blobs three times within the same Azure Datacentre. This is the least cost option
ZRS – Zone Redundant Storage – Replicates your Azure Blobs synchronous across three Azure Availability Zones in the primary region.
GRS – Geo-Redundant Storage– Copies your Azure Blobs synchronous three times within the same Azure Datacentre, then copies the same Azure Blobs asynchronously across to one other single location in another secondary Azure Region.
GZRS – Geo-Zone-Redundant Storage– Copies your Azure Blobs synchronous across three Azure Availability Zones in the primary region, then copies the same Azure Blobs asynchronously across to one other single location in another secondary Azure Region.

Azure Blob Storage Tiering

Microsoft provides different storage tiering models for the storing of your data.

Each one has a different storage pricing model in Azure (per GB) and access requirements.

Hot – Best for data that is accessed frequently. (most expensive per GB)
Cool – Great for data that is accessed infrequently. (not as expensive as Hot, but no where as cheap as the Archive Tier)
Archive – Perfect for data that is very rarely accessed. (cheapest per GB)

Azure Blob Storage Types

Azure Blob Storage has three different types

These are;

Block Blobs – Perfect for storing documents, text files or even your media files
Append Blobs – cannot be modified and requires you to upload a new blob.
Page Blobs – are used for storing Azure Virtual Machine disks.

Azure Blob Storage Limitations

Although Azure Blob Storage seems limitless, there are always some technical limitations that you should be aware of.

Some of these limitations are;

Service Level Agreement – Microsoft provides an uptime 99.99% on Azure Blob Storage
Maximum size of Storage Account – 500TB
Maximum size of a Single Blob – 5TB
Number of Blocks in a Blob – 50,000 blocks
Maximum size of a block – 100MB
Minimum size of a block – 64KB
Maximum Storage Account Capacity – 5PB
Number of Storage Accounts per Subscription – 200
Tiering – Only the Hot and Cool Access Tiers can be set at the root of the Storage Container. Archive Tier is per individual Blob. (you can select multiple files using Cloud Storage Manager to change to the Archive Tier. This isnt possible using the Azure Portal)
Archive Tier stores the data offline. This requires time to retrieve the Blob from the offline storage. There is additional cost to retrieve this data and the retrieval time can take several hours.
Archive Tier Rehydration – When a Blob is in the Archive Tier the data cannot be modified as it is actually offline. To modify a Blob in this Tier you would first need to rehydrate the Blob to an Online Tier (Hot or Cool)

Azure Blob Storage Unstructured Data

Azure Blob Storage Configurations and Options

Azure Blob Storage Pricing

As with anything cloud-based, be careful which options you select as there will be cost impacts. As an example, Locally Redundant Storage is the cheapest availability option for Microsoft’s Azure Blob Storage, whereas Geo Zone Redundant Storage provides the highest Availability, but costs significantly more.

For Azure Blob Tiering, the Archive Tier is the cheapest at almost a tenth of the cost of Cool and Hot Tiers..

Tiering	LRS – Locally Redundant Storage	ZRS – Zone Redundant Storage	GRS – Geo-Redundant Storage	RA-GRS – Read Access Geo-Redundant Storage	GZRS – Geo Zone Redundant Storage	RA-GZRS – Read Access Geo Zone Redundant Storage
Blob Storage – Archive Tier	0.03 cents for 10GB	Option not available for Archive Tier	0.07 cents for 10GB	0.07 cents for 10GB	Option not available for Archive Tier	Option not available for Archive Tier
Blob Storage – Cool Tier	0.21 cents for 10GB	0.26 cents for 10GB	0.41 cents for 10GB	0.53 cents for 10GB	0.48 cents for 10GB	0.60 cents for 10GB
Blob Storage – Hot Tier	0.28 cents for 10GB	0.35 cents for 10GB	0.56 cents for 10GB	0.70 cents for 10GB	0.66 cents for 10GB	0.82 cents for 10GB

Now while the price does fluctutate at times, and even differentiates between the different Microsoft Azure Datacentres, the pricing table above has been given as a reference to the differences in costs and options on your Azure Storage.

To work out how much the cost differences, you can use the Microsoft Azure Pricing Calculator to work out the cost impacts to your solution

Azure Blob Storage Best Practices

Azure Blob Storage is a highly scalable, durable, and cost-effective object storage solution from Microsoft Azure. It is a great option for storing unstructured data, such as text and binary data, in the cloud. To get the most out of Azure Blob Storage, it’s important to follow some best practices. In this article, we will discuss the key best practices for Azure Blob Storage.

Use appropriate storage tiers:

Azure Blob Storage offers three storage tiers: Hot, Cool, and Archive. Hot storage is optimized for frequent access to data, Cool storage is optimized for infrequent access, and Archive storage is optimized for long-term data retention. Choose the right storage tier based on your data access patterns and the costs associated with each tier.

Enable versioning:

Versioning allows you to keep multiple versions of the same blob, so you can easily recover from accidental deletions or updates. To enable versioning, you can use the Azure portal, Azure CLI, or Azure Storage REST API.

Use a content delivery network (CDN):

A CDN can help distribute your blobs globally and improve the performance and responsiveness of your applications. You can configure a CDN for your Blob Storage account by using the Azure portal or Azure CLI.

Use shared access signatures (SAS) wisely:

SAS is a secure way to grant access to your blobs without exposing your storage account key. However, it’s important to limit the scope of access granted by the SAS and to set an appropriate expiration time.

Enable encryption:

Azure Blob Storage supports encryption of data at rest using Azure Storage Service Encryption. This feature encrypts your data before it is written to disk and automatically decrypts it when you access it.

Use Azure Blob Storage events:

Azure Blob Storage events allow you to trigger serverless functions or logic apps when specific events occur in your storage account. You can use events to implement complex workflows or integrate with other Azure services.

Monitor and manage your storage account:

Regularly monitor the usage and performance of your storage account using Azure Monitor. You can set up alerts to receive notifications when certain thresholds are met, and you can also use Azure Policy to enforce policies and control access to your storage account.

Monitor usage and storage consumption:

Reduce cost by using Cloud Storage Manager to gain insights in to your cloud storage consumption.

Use the right tools for the job:

Azure Blob Storage provides a number of tools and SDKs for working with your blobs, including Azure Portal, Azure CLI, and Azure Storage REST API as well as our own Cloud Storage Manager. Choose the tool that best fits your needs and make sure to follow the best practices for each tool.

In conclusion, following these best practices can help you get the most out of Azure Blob Storage and ensure that your data is secure, scalable, and accessible. Whether you’re storing unstructured data or building applications that rely on Blob Storage, following these best practices can help you maximize your investment and minimize risks.

Do you want information on all your Blobs in Azure?

Azure Blob Storage Insights

Now that you have some background in to what Azure Blob Storage can do for you and are ready to take the jump and start uploading huge amounts of data to your Azure Storage Containers.

Cloud Storage Manager provides you with further insights in to your Azure consumption. Providing you with quick to see capacity information, searching through all your Blob Storage, as well as historical reporting of your Azure Storage Accounts consumption.

If you want to see exactly what is in your Azure Storage Accounts, download Cloud Storage Manager and test it for yourself for free.

Azure Blob Storage Architecture

Azure Blob Storage is designed with a distributed architecture that provides high availability, durability, and scalability. The architecture comprises three layers:

Front-End Layer

The front-end layer handles incoming requests from clients and routes them to the appropriate back-end nodes.

Back-End Layer

The back-end layer consists of multiple storage nodes that store the data in a distributed manner. The data is stored in a redundant manner to ensure high availability and durability.

Blob Service Layer

The Blob Service Layer provides the APIs and SDKs for accessing the Blob Storage service. It also provides features such as authentication and authorization, metadata, and access control for Blob Storage.

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