Automatically updates Access Tier in Azure Blob Storage

In this post, let us quickly take a look at how to automatically updates the access tier in Azure Blob Storage. Azure Storage supports three different levels of storage tiers for Blob objects. They are Hot storage tier, Cool storage tier, and Archive storage tier. This enables cost-effective usages of blob data storage. With the different levels of storage tiers, you can choose what types of tier needs for your data.

Automatically updates Access Tier in Azure Blob Storage

To quickly summarize, we use hot storage tier for these data which are accessed very frequently. Cool tier intended to access less than hot tiers, in general for at least 30 days. Archive tier is intended for long-term data backup or archival purposes and will remain in the tier for at least 180 days.  Hot tier has the highest storage cost and lowest access cost, whereas the archive tier has the lowest storage cost and highest access cost.

You may read out this article that talked how to change the access tier manually

Let’s take a look at how we can do the tier updates automatically using Storage Life Cycle Management

Navigate to the Azure Storage and Select Life Cycle Management available under “Blob Service“

In the “Life Cycle Management” section, select the “Add Rule” option to add a new rule. In the Add rule screen, you can define when you want to move blob storage from Hot to Cool and the Archive. Even you can configure when to delete blob storage.

You can also customize the rules for a specific set of Blob folder, which you can define as Filter set while defining the Rule.

Once rules is created, you can see them under Lifecycle Management screen and status as enabled if it was set to enabled during the creation.

The Lifecycle management windows show both list view and the code view the rules that brining a JSON format of custom rules setup for the blob storage account.

Using this you can easily update blob storage tiers automatically.