FAQ

• What is a Blob Storage account and what are the differences between this account and a general-purpose storage account?

  A Blob Storage account is specialized for storing data as blobs, and allows users to specify an access tier based on the frequency of access to data in that account. General Purpose accounts can be used to store blobs as well as files, disks, tables, and queues.

• Has the pricing of Block Blob in the general-purpose Storage account been changed?

  No. The pricing of Block Blob in the general-purpose Storage account hasn’t yet been changed. Please view the Block Blog Pricing page.

• When viewing the Azure bill, how can we distinguish whether paying for Blob in the Blob Storage account or general-purpose Storage account is required?

  If “Hot” or “Cool” is in the resource name, this means that this expense is related to the Blob Storage account. For instance, if it’s “Standard IO - Cool Block Blob (GB)”, it means you used the Blob Storage account and need to pay for this account, while “Standard IO – Block Blob (GB)” is charged in relation to the Block Blob in the general-purpose Storage account.

• What are Premium Hot, Cool, and Archive access tiers, and how can I determine which one to use?

  Premium* Blob Storage is available only to the premium block blob storage account type and is best suited for IO intensive workloads that require low and consistent storage latency.

  Storage GB pricing increases from Archive to Cool, from Cool to Hot, and from Hot to Premium. And the cost of transactions increases, conversely, from Premium to Hot, from Hot to Cool, and from Cool to Archive. Archive and Cool tiers should be used for rarely and infrequently accessed data, respectively. The Cool tier has a lower availability SLA than the Hot tier.

  Please note you can set the access tier of a blob as Hot, Cool, or Archive in Blob Storage and General Purpose v2 accounts. At present you cannot tier data from Premium into Hot, Cool or Archive and you cannot tier data from Hot, Cool or Archive to Premium. We are working on supporting object tiering for Premium in the future.

• What are “Hot” and “Cool” access layers and how do we ascertain which one is to be used?

  In the Blob Storage account, we could set Blob’s access layer to “Hot” and “Cool”. The storage GB pricing increases in the sequence of “Cool” and “Hot” layer. The data access expense increases in the sequence of “Hot” and “Cool” layer. The “Hot” and “Cool” layers are separately applied to data with almost no access and occasional access, and the availability of Service Level Agreement of these data has a lower requirement. If you don’t know the data access mode, it’s recommended that you use the “Hot” layer for at least one month in the beginning, then decide if it’s necessary to shift to “Cool” storage to save costs where applicable.

• Is paying the data write expense of switching a Blob Storage account from “Cool” to “Hot” required?

  We will charge the data retrieval of the Blob Storage account when it’s switched from “Cool” to “Hot”. For instance, if the Blob Storage account has 100 GB data, when the account is switched from “Cool” to “Hot”, you will be charged with a data retrieval fee of 100 * ¥ 0.0657 = ¥ 6.57.

• Is paying for data writes required when the Blob Storage account is switched from “Hot” to “Cool”?

  No. Paying for data writes is not required when your account is switched from “Hot” to “Cool”. If you write directly data into the “Cool” access layer of the Blob Storage account, only paying the data writing expense is required.

• What is the charge for Geo-replication data transfer?

  When you write data into GRS accounts, that data will be replicated to another Azure region. The Geo-Replication Data Transfer charge is the bandwidth cost of replicating that data to another Azure region.

• What are the total charges incurred when changing my account replication setting from LRS to GRS or RA-GRS?

  There will be a one-time fee equal to the sum of all data multiplied by the geo-replication fee in the primary region. For data stored in the Archive tier, there will also be a charge to read all the data (both read operations per 10,000 blobs and for data retrieval per GB) from the primary region and to write all the data (write operations per 10,000) into the secondary region.