Best Practices for Managing Azure Storage Costs in Large-Scale Projects

Question

Hi everyone,

I'm currently working on a large-scale project hosted in Azure, and I've noticed that our storage costs have started to increase significantly. I’d like to know the best practices for optimizing storage costs in Azure, particularly when dealing with large volumes of data.

Here are a few specific questions I have:

1. Storage Tiers: How do you determine when to use different storage tiers (e.g., Hot, Cool, Archive) to minimize costs while maintaining performance?
2. Data Retention Policies: What are the recommended retention policies for large datasets to avoid unnecessary costs?
3. Automation: Are there any automation tools or scripts that can help with monitoring and optimizing storage costs over time?

Any advice or suggestions would be appreciated. Looking forward to hearing how others manage their Azure storage effectively!

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Hello Alyx Bond,

Thanks for your questions:

Storage tier depends on your access requirements: If you need your data accessed frequently, use hot tier, cold for infrequent (least 30 days) and archive for rarely accessed (180 days)

See: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/storage/blobs/access-tiers-overview

For recommended data retention practices: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/well-architected/cost-optimization/optimize-data-costs

With automation, you can use Azure Automation or PowerShell scripts.

You can mark it 'Accept Answer' and 'Upvote' if this helped you

Regards,

Abiola