Hopefully you won’t need to restore from backup files, but picking the right level of accessibility can result in significant cost savings.
- Hot – Most expensive, because the data is easily accessible, on-demand whenever you need it. This is not the most appropriate for backups.
- No retention requirement
- Highest storage costs ($0.018 per GB)
- Lowest access costs – expected to be frequently accessed
- Cool – useful to save the most recent backup files, that is, most likely to be restored from.
- Requires minimum of 30 days storage
- Low storage costs ($0.01 per GB)
- Low access costs – expected to be rarely accessed
- Archive – super cheap and it’s assumed data here will not be needed anytime soon.
- Requires minimum of 180 days storage
- Takes 15 days before you can access it again
- Lowest storage costs ($0.0018 per GB)
- Highest access costs – expected not to be accessed
For more information, visit the Azure documentation title Azure Blob storage: hot, cool, and archive access tiers