Premium Storage Billing Details

Question

I accidentally created a premium storage account of noteworthy size and realized that it was going to be EXTREMELY EXPENSIVE after reviewing the pricing calculator. Immediately, I was able to delete all the storage account resources that within an hour of initially creating the premium storage account.

For premium storage accounts, is the billing prorated per minute/hour/day? I am quite concerned due to the pricing calculator only giving price per month rates. Please let me know if anyone has insight to this.

Answer 1

Hi Ryan Tschannen,

Thanks for reaching out to Microsoft Q&A.

For Azure Premium Storage accounts, the billing is prorated hourly based on the monthly price. Below are the breakup details...

• Data Storage: You are charged per GB/mth for the amount of data you have stored
• Operations: Billing per transaction
• Data Transfer: Charges apply per GB of data transferred
• Metadata: You pay per GB/mth for metadata storage
• Blob Index Tags: You're billed per tag if you enable this feature
• Change Feed: Billing is based on logged changes
• https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/azure-docs/issues/55565

Please 'Upvote'(Thumbs-up) and 'Accept' as an answer if the reply was helpful. This will benefit other community members who face the same issue.

Answer 2

@Ryan Tschannen Welcome to Microsoft Q&A FOrum, Thank you for posting your query here!

Azure Storage Premium accounts are billed based on the number of provisioned capacity and the duration of usage. The billing is prorated per minute, so you are only charged for the amount of time that you use the service. This means that if you delete a premium storage account within an hour of creating it, you will only be charged for that hour of usage.

However, keep in mind that there is a minimum charge for each premium storage account, which is equivalent to the cost of one day of usage. This means that even if you delete the account within an hour, you will still be charged for one day of usage.

I would recommend to contact Billing and Subscription team would be the best to provide more insight and guidance on this scenario based on your region and requirement https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/support/options/it's free, and it's the best choice for you.

Additional information:

Cost of operation

In many cases, it's possible that your overall cost of operation using premium storage is lower than using standard storage.

For example, consider an application requiring 16,000 IOPS. To achieve this performance, you need a Standard_D14 Azure IaaS VM, which can give a maximum IOPS of 16,000 by using 32 standard storage 1-TB disks. Each 1-TB standard storage disk can achieve a maximum of 500 IOPS.

• The estimated cost of this VM per month is $1,570.
• The monthly cost of 32 standard storage disks is $1,638.
• The estimated total monthly cost is $3,208.

If you hosted the same application on premium storage, you need a smaller VM size and fewer premium storage disks, reducing the overall cost. A Standard_DS13 VM can meet the 16,000 IOPS requirement by using four P30 disks. The DS13 VM has a maximum IOPS of 25,600, and each P30 disk has a maximum IOPS of 5,000. Overall, this configuration can achieve 5,000 x 4 = 20,000 IOPS.

• The estimated cost of this VM per month is $1,003.
• The monthly cost of four P30 premium storage disks is $544.34.
• The estimated total monthly cost is $1,544.

The following table summarizes the cost breakdown of this scenario for standard and premium storage.

Expand table

Monthly cost	Standard	Premium
Cost of VM per month	$1,570.58 (Standard_D14)	$1,003.66 (Standard_DS13)
Cost of VM per month	$1,570.58 (Standard_D14)	$1,003.66 (Standard_DS13)
Cost of disks per month	$1,638.40 (32 x 1-TB disks)	$544.34 (4 x P30 disks)
Overall cost per month	$3,208.98	$1,544.34

Linux distros

With premium storage, you get the same level of performance for VMs running Windows and Linux. We support many flavors of Linux distros. For more information, see Linux distributions endorsed on Azure.

Different distros are better suited for different types of workloads. You see different levels of performance depending on the distro on which your workload is running. Test the Linux distros with your application and choose the one that works best.

When you run Linux with premium storage, check the latest updates about required drivers to ensure high performance.

Cost of operation

In many cases, it's possible that your overall cost of operation using premium storage is lower than using standard storage.

For example, consider an application requiring 16,000 IOPS. To achieve this performance, you need a Standard_D14 Azure IaaS VM, which can give a maximum IOPS of 16,000 by using 32 standard storage 1-TB disks. Each 1-TB standard storage disk can achieve a maximum of 500 IOPS.

• The estimated cost of this VM per month is $1,570.
• The monthly cost of 32 standard storage disks is $1,638.
• The estimated total monthly cost is $3,208.

If you hosted the same application on premium storage, you need a smaller VM size and fewer premium storage disks, reducing the overall cost. A Standard_DS13 VM can meet the 16,000 IOPS requirement by using four P30 disks. The DS13 VM has a maximum IOPS of 25,600, and each P30 disk has a maximum IOPS of 5,000. Overall, this configuration can achieve 5,000 x 4 = 20,000 IOPS.

• The estimated cost of this VM per month is $1,003.
• The monthly cost of four P30 premium storage disks is $544.34.
• The estimated total monthly cost is $1,544.

The following table summarizes the cost breakdown of this scenario for standard and premium storage.

Expand table

Monthly cost	Standard	Premium
Cost of VM per month	$1,570.58 (Standard_D14)	$1,003.66 (Standard_DS13)
Cost of disks per month	$1,638.40 (32 x 1-TB disks)	$544.34 (4 x P30 disks)
Overall cost per month	$3,208.98	$1,544.34

Linux distros

With premium storage, you get the same level of performance for VMs running Windows and Linux. We support many flavors of Linux distros. For more information, see Linux distributions endorsed on Azure.

Different distros are better suited for different types of workloads. You see different levels of performance depending on the distro on which your workload is running. Test the Linux distros with your application and choose the one that works best.

When you run Linux with premium storage, check the latest updates about required drivers to ensure high performance.

Please let us know if you have any further queries. I’m happy to assist you further.    

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