Azure Files supports two different media tiers of storage, SSD and HDD, which allow you to tailor your file shares to the performance and price requirements of your scenario:

• SSD (“premium”): File shares hosted on solid-state drives (SSDs) provide consistent high performance and low latency, within single-digit milliseconds for most IO operations.
• HDD (“standard”): File shares hosted on hard disk drives (HDDs) provide cost-effective storage for general purpose use.

Azure Files has multiple pricing models including provisioned and pay-as-you-go options. The following sections detail the specifics of each model to help you make a choice about which model works best for your scenario.

Provisioned v2

In a provisioned model, the primary costs of the Azure file share are based on the amount of storage, IOPS, and throughput you provision when you create or update your file share, regardless of how much you use. With the provisioned v2 billing model, you have the ability to separately provision storage, IOPS, and throughput, although we will recommend IOPS and throughput provisioning to you based on the amount of provisioned storage you select. We recommend provisioned v2 file shares for all new Azure Files deployments. For more information on the provisioned v2 billing model, see the provisioned v2 billing model.

Provisioned v1

In a provisioned model, the primary costs of the Azure file share are based on the amount of storage, IOPS, and throughput you provision when you create or update your file share, regardless of how much you use. In the provisioned v1 billing model, there is one provisioned quantity for which you will pay for your file share: provisioned storage. When you create your file share, the provisioned IOPS and throughput available on your share are determined based on the amount of storage you provision. If you need more IOPS or throughput, you’ll need to provision additional storage. The provisioned v1 model is only available for SSD file shares. We recommend using the provisioned v2 billing model for new SSD file share deployments. For more information on the provisioned v1 billing model, see understanding the provisioned v1 billing model .

Pay-as-you-go

In a pay-as-you-go model, the cost of the Azure file share is based on how much you use the file share, in the form of used storage, transaction, and data transfer costs. The pay-as-you-go model offers three “access tiers” on HDD storage which provide a way to balance the used storage versus used transaction prices:

• The transaction optimized access tier offers the lowest cost transaction pricing for transaction heavy workloads that don’t need the low latency offered by SSD file shares. The transaction optimized access tier is recommended for migrating data into file shares using the pay-as-you-go billing model.
• The hot access tier offers balanced storage and transaction pricing for workloads that have a good measure of both.
• The cool access tier offers the most cost-efficient storage pricing for storage-intensive workloads.

Pay-as-you-go is only available for HDD file shares. We recommend using the provisioned v2 billing model for new HDD file share deployments. For more information on the pay-as-you-go billing model, see understanding the pay-as-you-go billing model.