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Block blob pricing

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Block blob storage is used for streaming and storing documents, videos, pictures, backups, and other unstructured text or binary data.

Total cost of block blob storage depends on:

  • Volume of data stored per month.
  • Quantity and types of operations performed, along with any data transfer costs.
  • Data redundancy option selected.

Explore storage options

Explore Azure block blob storage options, including account types and redundancy. Learn more about storage account types and redundancy.

FAQ

Blob storage

  • 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.

  • No. Block blob prices in general-purpose storage accounts have not changed.

  • If you see “Hot,” “Cool,” or “Archive” in the resource name, this means the charge is associated with Blob Storage accounts. For example, if you see “Standard IO – Cool Block Blob (GB),” this means you’re using and being charged for Blob storage or general-purpose v2 accounts. “Standard IO – Block Blob (GB)” is the metric associated with the use of block blobs in general-purpose storage accounts.

  • 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.

  • You’ll be charged for both read operations per 10,000 blobs and for data retrieval per GB when you toggle your Blob storage or general-purpose v2 account from Cool to Hot. For example, if you have 10,000 blobs equaling 100 GB of data in a Blob Storage or General Purpose v2 account, and you toggle that account from Cool to Hot, you’ll be charged 10,000 x ($-/10,000) + 100 × $- = $- for data retrieval.

  • For general-purpose v2 accounts, you are charged for write operations (per 10,000). For Blob storage accounts, there is no charge for Write operations.

  • 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. When you switch an account from RA-GRS to GRS or LRS (or from RA-GZRS to GZRS or ZRS), the account will be billed as RA-GRS (or RA-GZRS) for 30 more days from the conversion date.

  • A blob cannot be read directly from the Archive tier. To read a blob in the Archive tier, a user must first change the tier to Hot or Cool. For example, to retrieve and read a single 1,000-GB archived blob that has been in the Archive tier for 90 days, the following charges would apply:

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

    Rehydrate operation (SetBlobTier Archive to Hot): $-/10k = $-

    Early deletion charge: (180 - 90 days)/30 days x $-/GB-month x 1,000 = $-

    Read blob operation from Hot = $-/10k = $-

    Total = $- + $- + $- + $- = $-

  • Pricing for Blob storage accounts and general-purpose v2 accounts is identical for block blob storage, except for data write (per GB) and early deletion charges in the Cool tier. Blob storage accounts charge for Cool tier data writes (per GB) but not Cool tier early deletion, whereas general-purpose v2 accounts charge for Cool tier early deletion but not Cool tier data writes (per GB).

  • 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.

  • 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.

    To move data, you can synchronously copy blobs from using the new Put Block From URL API (sample code)or a version of AzCopy that supports this API. Put Block From URL synchronously copies data server side, which means that the data has finished copying when the call completes and all data movement happens inside the Azure Storage.

Azure Storage Reserved Capacity FAQs

  • Azure Storage Reserved Capacity helps you lower your data storage cost by committing to one-year or three-years of Azure Storage on Block Blob or Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2.

  • Azure Storage Reserved Capacity provides options to purchase standard storage capacity in units of 100 TB and 1 PB per month blocks for one-year or three-years terms. To purchase Azure Storage Reserved Capacity, you can choose the required number of units for Hot, Cool or Archive storage tier on any of the available storage redundancies (e.g. LRS, ZRS, GRS), and for a specific region (e.g., US West 2). Additionally, you can choose to pay with a single, upfront payment or monthly payments.

    Get started in the Azure portal.

  • Reservations are available today for 100 TB or 1 PB blocks, with higher discounts applicable on 1 PB blocks. In the reservation purchase experience through Azure portal, Microsoft may provide you recommendations based on your previous usage to help determine the sizes you should purchase.

  • For Enterprise Agreement (EA) customers, Azure Monetary Commitment will be used first to purchase Azure Storage Reserved Capacity. In scenarios where EA customers have used all their monetary commitment, Azure Storage Reserved Capacity can still be purchased, and those purchases will be invoiced for the single, upfront payment on their next overage bill.

    For customers purchasing via Azure.com, at the time of purchase, the credit card on file will be charged for the full upfront payment (or monthly fixed payments) of Azure Storage Reservations.

  • As soon as purchase is completed. If the purchase is made in the middle of the month, the reserved amount is pro-rated for that month.

  • Azure Storage Reserved Capacity is purchased at a single subscription or shared resource group scope. Therefore, reservation is applied to your usage aggregated to the purchased scope and cannot be limited to a specific storage account, container or object within the subscription.

  • No, all purchases are at the aggregate, subscription level only. Purchases cannot be split across multiple subscriptions.

  • Azure Storage Reserved Capacity allows you to purchase data storage capacity for Standard (GPv2) storage and Blob Storage accounts. The purchased capacity can be used for Block Blobs and Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2. Currently Premium Storage, other storage types (Managed Disks, Files, Queues, Page Blobs and Tables), early deletion charges, operations and data transfer are not included in Azure Storage Reserved Capacity.

  • Azure Storage Reserved Capacity is purchased for a specific region (e.g., US West 2 or any other region of your choice), storage tier (e.g., Hot, Cool or Archive) and redundancy (e.g., LRS, GRS or ZRS), and therefore cannot be used outside these constructs. You can always purchase an additional Azure Storage Reserved Capacity for your data storage need in other regions or redundancies.

  • Select the ‘Reservations’ menu on the left side of the Azure portal to view all the Azure Reserved Storage Capacity details associated with your account. All the details associated with the Azure Storage Reserved Capacity that you have purchased will be displayed on the right.

  • An exchange allows you to receive a prorated refund based on the unused amount, which applies fully to the purchase price of a new Azure Storage Reserved Capacity. A cancellation terminates your Azure Storage Reserved Capacity and you'll receive a prorated refund based on the remaining term of the Azure Storage Reserved Capacity minus a 12 percent early termination fee.

  • There's no limit on the number of exchanges you can make. Additionally, there's no fee associated with an exchange. The new Azure Storage Reserved Capacity purchased however must be of equal or greater value than the prorated credit from the original Azure Storage Reserved Capacity. Additionally, Azure Storage Reserved Capacity can only be exchanged with another Azure Storage Reserved Capacity.

  • You can cancel Azure Storage Reserved Capacity at any time (up to $50000 per year). Cancelling allows you to return the remaining months of an Azure Storage Reserved Capacity back to Microsoft for an early termination fee of 12 percent. The remaining prorated balance, minus the fee, will be refunded to your original purchase.

  • If you decide that you wish to exchange your Azure Storage Reserved Capacity (e.g., exchange a purchase 7 units of 100 TB block for 1 unit of 1 PB block ), you can initiate exchange from management portal and view the inventory of Azure Reserved Capacities. Click on a purchased capacity and two buttons will appear in the command bar stating “refund” or “exchange”. Once selected, a support ticket, prepopulated with all of the Azure Storage Reserved Capacity details, will open. Once submitted, the request will be processed, and an email will be sent to you to confirm completion of the request.

  • You will receive email notifications 30 days prior to expiration, and again on the expiration date. Once the reservation expires, deployed capacity will continue to run and will be billed at the then current pay-as-you-go rate.

  • Let’s assume you purchased 100 TB of reserved capacity for 1-year for LRS Hot Storage in US West 2.

    100 TB reserved capacity pricing for Hot LRS Data Stored (US West 2) = $18540.

    You can pay the full amount upfront, or pay fixed monthly installments at $- every month for the next 12 months. Let’s assume you signed up for a monthly reservation payment plan.

    Scenario 1 - If in any given month within the reservation period, you use 101 TB, your bill will include $- for 100 TB of reserved capacity and $19 for 1 TB at pay-go prices. Your total bill for data stored that month is now $1564.

    Scenario 2 – If in any given month within the reservation period, you use 80 TB of capacity, your bill will include $- for 100 TB of reserved capacity.

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  • Flexible support plans starting at $29/month. Shop for a plan.
  • Guaranteed 99.9 percent or greater availability (excludes preview services). Read the SLA.

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