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› › Microsoft announces Azure archive blob storage at $2/TB + outbound traffic
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Microsoft announces Azure archive blob storage at $2/TB + outbound traffic

williewillie Member
edited December 2017 in General

This is a few days old but I don't remember seeing it mentioned here yet:

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-au/blog/cloud-storage-now-more-affordable-announcing-general-availability-of-azure-archive-storage/

Pricing is here:

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/storage/blobs/archive-ga/

It's a little hard for me to figure out but the headline numbers seem to be:

  • $0.002/GB/mo ($2/TB) locally redundant storage (i.e. multiple copies in same DC). Added: various levels of higher redundancy like geo redundant are available at 0.004/GB and up. That's also impressive.

  • $.02/GB outbound bandwith, free inbound, some charges per i/o operation except deletion is free (hear that C14?!).

  • Minimum 6 months archive term, i.e. if you delete your archive in less than 6 months they charge you extra

  • AWS Glacier-like latency, i.e. retrieval time of potentially hours

Overall this seems like an interesting alternative for long term archiving, especially for last ditch backup where you'll only access it in an unexpected case where your other copies fail. It looks more cost effective than either C14 or OVH Archive Cloud for that usage. I could possibly benefit from moving a few TB of my own backups there, that are currently either in C14 ("intensive" 5 euro/TB version) or in VPS or dedi storage. I'll look into it.

Thanked by 3Yura netpioneer Shazan

Comments

  • FranciscoFrancisco Top Host, Host Rep, Veteran

    Talk about a cloud tax.

    Neat idea though :)

    Francisco

    Thanked by 1WSS
  • WSSWSS Member

    @Francisco said:
    Talk about a cloud tax.

    Neat idea though :)

    Francisco

    Yeah... if only someone here was going to offer block storage..

  • NekkiNekki Veteran

    Blob-level tiering is an excellent idea.

  • FranciscoFrancisco Top Host, Host Rep, Veteran

    @WSS said:

    @Francisco said:
    Talk about a cloud tax.

    Neat idea though :)

    Francisco

    Yeah... if only someone here was going to offer block storage..

    This isn't block storage though, is it? I would assuming it's some sort of FTP/etc?

    Francisco

  • raindog308raindog308 Administrator, Veteran
    edited December 2017

    @willie my main question here would be if that data retrieval per GB ($.0002/GB) includes network. I don't think it does. So that's retrieving it from one part of Azure to another, not going from Azure to your house.

    I believe you'd pay 9-something cents per GB for network on top of that. So restoring, say, 2TB would be $180.

    Amusingly, even Microsoft gets it wrong when trying to figure out what Azure costs:

    https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/storage/blobs/

    A blob cannot be read directly from the Archive tier. To read a blob in Archive, a user must first change the tier to Hot or Cool. For example, to retrieve and read a 100-GB blob in Archive in Central US that has been in the Archive tier for 90 days, the following charges would incur (effective 2/1/2018):

Data retrieval (per GB) from Archive: $0.002/GB-month x 1,000 x 1 GB = $2

Rehydrate operation (SetBlobTier Archive to Hot): $5/10k x 1,000 = $0.50

Early deletion charge: (180 - 90 days) x $0.002/GB-month x 1,000 x 1 GB = $6

Read blob operation from Hot = $0.004/10k * 1,000 = $0.0004

Total = $2 + $0.50 + $6 + $0.0004 = $8.51

    I think all those x1000s are supposed to be x100s.

    Thanked by 1willie
  • WSSWSS Member

    @Francisco said:
    This isn't block storage though, is it? I would assuming it's some sort of FTP/etc?

    I have no idea how it works, and reeding deeper, it doesn't actually look like they know, either.

  • raindog308raindog308 Administrator, Veteran

    Francisco said: This isn't block storage though, is it? I would assuming it's some sort of FTP/etc?

    It's their blob storage, which is similar to B2, Digital Ocean Object Storage, AWS S3, BuyVM Wet Hay In The Back Of the Stall Storage, etc.

    Thanked by 1WSS
  • NekkiNekki Veteran

    Par for the course with Microsoft.

    I’ll ask my rep on Tuesday to try to give me some example pricing.

  • KermEdKermEd Member
    edited December 2017

    They can definitely afford it. Right now we have two VPSs on Azure, their lowest end Windows and lowest end Ubuntu server we could build. Our cost is around 170/m.

    A 1TB LUN costs around 12.50/m for the storage account and disk.

    In comparison we are using about 500GB of Sql using their Sql storage - I think we pay about 3/m.

    But considering their usable servers all cost around 60/m, plus network fees, plus IP reservation fees, plus storage fees, plus disk fees and then usage fees of top of that - it all adds up very quick. If we werent getting it for free, there is no way I'd be using azure... Especially if you are doing redundancy.

  • netpioneernetpioneer Member
    edited December 2017

    @raindog308 said:
    It's their blob storage, which is similar to B2, Digital Ocean Object Storage, AWS S3,

    AWS S3, Wasabi are hot storage.

    C14, MS Azure Archive Blob Storage are cold storage.

    "AWS Glacier-like latency, i.e. retrieval time of potentially hours"

    C14 Intensive is a better deal -- free data transfers, free operations.

  • williewillie Member

    netpioneer said:

    C14 Intensive is a better deal -- free data transfers, free operations.

    Well, there is math involved ;). Free transfers and operations, but ~3x higher storage costs (5 euro vs 2 USD). Standard C14 would beat Intensive after just 4 months if it weren't for the deletion fee. OVH Cloud Archive doesn't have the deletion fee so maybe it beats Standard on medium durations. Azure looked good because it gets rid of the upload fee, but those other fees may kill its attraction, hmm.

  • netpioneernetpioneer Member

    OVH is not a contender.

  • seanhoseanho Member

    @raindog308 said:
    @willie my main question here would be if that data retrieval per GB ($.0002/GB) includes network. I don't think it does. So that's retrieving it from one part of Azure to another, not going from Azure to your house.

    I believe you'd pay 9-something cents per GB for network on top of that. So restoring, say, 2TB would be $180.

    Yes, this is what I'd want to know -- are those just the costs to "dehydrate" from archive tier to hot tier? Azure's bandwidth is not so cheap.

    Of course, the use-case is stuff like disaster recovery, if your primary and secondary backups are toast and you're willing to wait 15 hours for recovery -- in that case, you'd probably be willing to pay extra to get your data.

  • raindog308raindog308 Administrator, Veteran

    seanho said: Of course, the use-case is stuff like disaster recovery, if your primary and secondary backups are toast and you're willing to wait 15 hours for recovery -- in that case, you'd probably be willing to pay extra to get your data.

    Also if you're the sort that only needs one file back every now and then and it's typically source code or something, no worries. Heck, the first GB a month is free :-)

  • vimalwarevimalware Member

    Well, the pricing logic for cloud is to make its TCO always slightly less than ODC+E(own DC+engineers),
    .... NOT 10% of ODC+E. :p

    A good capitalist never leaves money on the table.

  • ShazanShazan Member, Host Rep

    @willie said:

    >

    • Minimum 6 months archive term, i.e. if you delete your archive in less than 6 months they charge you extra

    • AWS Glacier-like latency, i.e. retrieval time of potentially hours

    Yes, sounds interesting indeed, although one should consider the added cost of keeping the data for 6 months, that is not always suitable, as I believe that most of us keep backups for no more than 1 or 2 months, and the actual latency to retrieve the data. Hours means 1 hour? 3 hours? 12 hours?

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