Is there any cost involved to delete/purge the blob that has Archive access tier?

Question

After reading the blob storage tier policies , I got an idea of the cost associated with the blob that is moved between tiers.

However, my question, is there any cost involved, if want to delete/purge the blob that has the Archive access tier associated with it?

I read that there is an early deletion charge, if we move/delete the archived blob before the 180 days, but is there any charge or cost associated deleting the blob from archived tier after 180 days?

Thanks,
Tansheet

Answer 1

@Tansheet Izhad Thanks for raising this question! Firstly, apologies for the delay in responding here and any inconvenience this issue may have caused.

Firstly, let me explain how archive blob is charged : A blob cannot be read directly from the Archive tier. To read a blob in the Archive tier, a user must first change the tier to Hot or Cool. For example, to retrieve and read a single 1,000-GB archived blob that has been in the Archive tier for 90 days, the following charges would apply:

Data retrieval (per GB) from the Archive tier: $0.022/GB-month x 1,000 GB = $22
Rehydrate operation (SetBlobTier Archive to Hot): $5.50/10k = $0.0006
Early deletion charge: (180 - 90 days)/30 days x $0.002/GB-month x 1,000 = $5.40
Read blob operation from Hot = $0.0044/10k = $0.0001
Total = $22 + $0.0006 + $5.40 + $0.0001 = $28

• In addition to the per-GB, per-month charge, any blob that is moved to the Archive tier is subject to an Archive early deletion period of 180 days. Additionally, for general-purpose v2 storage accounts, any blob that is moved to the Cool tier is subject to a Cool tier early deletion period of 30 days. This charge is prorated. For example, if a blob is moved to the Archive tier and then deleted or moved to the Hot tier after 45 days, the customer is charged an early deletion fee for 135 (180 minus 45) days of storage in the Archive tier.
• When a blob is moved from one access tier to another, its last modification time doesn't change. If you manually rehydrate an archived blob to hot tier, it would be moved back to archive tier by the lifecycle management engine. Disable the rule that affects this blob temporarily to prevent it from being archived again. Re-enable the rule when the blob can be safely moved back to archive tier. You may also copy the blob to another location if it needs to stay in hot or cool tier permanently.

Azure Archive Operations and pricing

There will be some charges associated after 180 days for the storage account.

• Storage capacity is billed in units of the average daily amount of data stored, in gigabytes (GB), over a monthly period. For example, if you consistently used 10 GB of storage for the first half of the month, and none for the second half of the month, you would be billed for your average usage of 5 GB of storage. However, using the Cool (GPv2 accounts only) or Archive tier for less than 30 and 180 days respectively will incur an additional charge.

For more information refer to this article: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/storage/blobs/storage-blob-storage-tiers#pricing-and-billing
For more information on pricing, please see this link: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/storage/blobs/.

If you still find any difficulties in pricing, Please reach out Azure billing and subscription management team it's free, support.
Subscription team would be the best to provide more insight and guidance on this scenario

Kindly let us know if the above helps or you need further assistance on this issue.

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Answer 2

Hi There,
This is really helpful on estimating the cost to move the data from archive tier to the hot or cold tier. Could you also provide insight what would be the price estimate to delete the files from cold/hot tier.

Answer 3

the costs estimations are roughly estimated based on the operations and can follow the below link:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/storage/blobs/archive-rehydrate-overview#pricing-and-billing

For more information about pricing for block blobs and data rehydration, see https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/pricing/details/storage/blobs/
and (https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/pricing/details/storage/blobs/#faq)

For more information on outbound data transfer charges, see https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/pricing/details/bandwidth/

and (https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/pricing/details/bandwidth/)

Pricing: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-gb/azure/storage/blobs/access-tiers-overview#pricing-and-billing

Refer Pricing calculator: (select Access Tier)

Pricing Calculator : https://azure.microsoft.com/en-in/pricing/calculator/