Why did costs not decrease after changing Azure Storage access tier from Hot to Cool?

Question

Why did my Azure Storage costs not decrease after switching the access tier of my storage account from Hot to Cool, and how can I audit the usage and charges?

PS - Based on common issues that we have seen from customers and other sources, we are posting these questions to help the Azure community.

Answer 1

The costs did not decrease after switching the access tier from Hot to Cool because the majority of your storage capacity consists of PageBlobs, which are unaffected by access tiers. Access tiers (Hot, Cool, Archive) only apply to BlockBlobs. Therefore, changing access tiers will not impact the costs associated with PageBlobs. To accurately audit your storage usage and charges, you need to review the capacity and usage metrics for different blob types.

To do this, you can use the Azure Monitoring tools to filter and view metrics: 1. Go to the Monitoring section in your Azure portal. 2. Select the 'Blob' metric namespace. 3. Apply filters to view the 'Blob Capacity' metric and categorize by Blob Type (PageBlob, BlockBlob, etc.).

For detailed pricing information, refer to the official Azure Blob Storage pricing documentation.

Resources:

• Access tiers for blob data - Azure Storage
• Azure Blob Storage pricing

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