Azure Blob storage - Last access time tracking now generally available
Published date: August 19, 2021
Customers store petabytes of data in Azure Blob storage comprised of tens to billions of individual files. This data can include frequently and infrequently accessed files. Azure Blob Storage provides multiple tiers to provide different costs points related to how often files are accessed to help customers control their costs.
Last access time tracking integrates with lifecycle management to allow the automatic tiering and deletion of data based on when individual blobs are last accessed. This allows greater cost control as well as an automatic workflow including deletion of data after it is no longer used.
Last access time can also be used without lifecycle management by any solution that needs to understand when individual blobs are last read and then take action.
Lifecycle management with last access time tracking is available in all public regions for accounts with flat namespace used. Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 will be supported later this year. Each last access time update is charged as an "other transaction" at most, once every 24 hours per object even if accessed 1000's of times in a day. This is separate from read transactions charges.
Learn more about last access time tracking at lifecycle-management with last access.