Azure Blob Storage - a cost-effective and sensible option
We used Azure Blob Storage as a staging ground for storing spreadsheet files needed for a forecasting model. We were looking for a …
Azure Blob Storage
Azure Blob Storage
Starting at $0.01 per GB/per month
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Pricing
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$0.0081
Cloud
per GB/per month
Azure Data Lake Storage
$0.0081
Cloud
per GB/per month
Files
$0.058
Cloud
per GB/per month
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- No setup fee
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- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting / Integration Services
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Product Details
What is Azure Blob Storage?
Microsoft's Blob Storage system on Azure is designed to make unstructured data available to customers anywhere through REST-based object storage.
Azure Blob Storage Technical Details
| Deployment Types | SaaS |
|---|---|
| Operating Systems | Unspecified |
| Mobile Application | No |
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Frequently Asked Questions
What is Azure Blob Storage?
Microsoft's Blob Storage system on Azure is designed to make unstructured data available to customers anywhere through REST-based object storage.
What is Azure Blob Storage's best feature?
Reviewers rate Support Rating highest, with a score of 9.
Who uses Azure Blob Storage?
The most common users of Azure Blob Storage are from Enterprises (1,001+ employees) and the Information Technology & Services industry.
Reviews and Ratings
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We used Azure Blob Storage as a staging ground for storing spreadsheet files needed for a forecasting model. We were looking for a cost-effective storage solution that could also accommodate different data types. Additionally, files that were not accessed frequently could be stored in archive storage, allowing more flexibility for the user.
- Easy to work with - drag and drop
- Capable of long term retention
- Relatively low cost
- Good for different data formats
- Allows archival storage
- UI needs improvement
- Search for files can be slow
- Additional details in documentation would be nice
April 23, 2022
My opinion on Azure Blob Storage in 2022
We use Azure Blob Storage for storing our media content and as backup cloud storage for our servers in our organization. Which is a cost-effective way to store our organization's data. Azure Blob Storage helps us to create data lakes for our analytics easily, and four storage tiers fulfill all our cloud storage needs
- Easy to backup VM's
- Inbound transfers are free
- Cost-effective for storing large amount of data when compared to other providers
- Outbound transfers are bit expensive
- Need improvement in documentation
April 12, 2022
Inexpensive and Reliable Storage Resource
Azure Blob Storage is used in our organization as a cloud storage. Our used case prompts us to store images every 5 minutes in the cloud and we also use blob storage as file configuration storage. It comes very handy in implementing especially in Azure Edge modules. We also use archive file storage in Azure whenever we just need a cloud based storage for files we rarely use.
- Low cost
- Reliable cloud based storage
- Scalable
- Costly in outbound transfers
We're using it to store SQL Server backups and audit logs. It's relatively cheap storage and because our data already exists in Azure, there are no ingress or egress fees. It's secure, always available, and very easy to access and use.
- We can backup directly from Azure VMs running SQL Server, no copying around.
- We can store SQL Audit logs directly in Azure Storage, no copying around.
- So far we haven't run into anything that's a problem for us or that we'd do differently.
March 26, 2022
Robust, Scalable and Secure Storage
We use Azure Blob Storage as a centralized location for storing Customer's documents (attachment) specific to a lead/cases/complaints/customer 360 module implemented using Dynamics 365. We also Azure Blob Storage for storing customers' data, which we then use for generating Power BI Reports. Earlier these were stored either in the respective applications or some on-premise-based solutions.
- Ease of use both through Azure Portal as well as API.
- Cost-effective solution for storing a large amount of data compared to other storage solutions.
- Scalability, Security, and Performance are the other key aspects of Azure Blob Storage that are easily manageable through Admin Console.
- If we are transferring huge amount of data (outbound), it can get quite expensive.
- With new features being added constantly, although a good thing, at times it becomes difficult to keep up with the changes. Documentation needs to keep UpToDate and should include best practices.
- Performance can be improved especially when it comes to cold storage.
March 26, 2022
Gets the job done
Azure Blob Storage is equivalent to Amazon's S3, but better because it supports HTTPS. It lets us host files of any size and automatically replicates them across several regions. It offers various tiers of storage so we can choose the price/performance we want based on our business requirements. It has robust access controls to ensure only the correct program/person accesses the files.
- Flexible access control with Shared Access Signatures.
- Encryption of files.
- Serving files encrypted in transit (HTTPS).
- Would be nice if it offered an S3 API for easier portability.
- Would be nice if it was cheaper.
We currently use Azure Blob Storage to back-end our Panzura implementation. We keep Azure Blob Storage files as our true source of data and Panzura file caching devices at each location that has a subset of our data. It houses all of our critical business files and does it for a substantial decrease in costs vs. our old on-prem storage. This is the primary solution we use for our core business and is used across all departments.
- Reduced cost. We were able to reduce our storage infrastructure by several hundred terabytes by consolidating redundant copies and dedupe/compression on files.
- Extremely high level of redundancy. We can replicate data in a variety of ways that we would never have been capable of on our own hardware.
- Unstructured data makes it harder to conceptualize what we have but with partners like Panzura that has been a non-issue for us.
- Not always easy to understand the different models or tiers you can pick from when purchasing.
January 17, 2020
Ease of use and efficiency makes Azure Blob a win!
We use Azure storage to handle data ingestion and storage for some BI reporting. A lot of the heavy lifting is done via some of the great Powershell commands via Azure. The ease of use and the ability to -flag upload file sizes really are useful. It has also been an excellent way for us to share data with not only internal users but also customers.
- Ease of use.
- Efficient in data ingestion.
- Documentation for Powershell v10.
- File transfer size starting larger than 4mb.
November 08, 2019
Azure Blob Storage - It's worth using in your environment
Azure Blob storage is currently used in various ways at our company.
First, like cloud storage for various Azure SaaS platforms. Things like managed SQL instances and data lake storage for Azure AI / ML. It is useful in that it is tiered, so you can use hot tier for these use cases.
Secondly, a more common use is to use the cold and archive tiers as a cheap location to store long-term backups and archives. We think of it as a replacement for tape offloading in our DR strategy. One thing to be away from is that the cost to bring those backups/archives back from the cloud can be very high. So this is used more as a place of last resort for disaster recovery currently, but it definitely has its place.
- Tiering - Hot/Cold/Archive.
- It allows you to pay for the performance you need for the task at hand.
- Easily consumed and accessed.
- Expensive to egress your data, especially in a true DR scenario from cold or archive tier.