Storage

Storage provides secure, scalable and easily accessible storage services that remain highly available and durable. The Storage service supports virtually all types of storage needs, from structured to unstructured data, NoSQL databases, and queues. Storage is a managed service and has a 99.9% monthly SLA.

Some practical uses for the Storage include: 

BLOB (Binary Large Object) storage

BLOB Storage is the simplest way to store large amounts of unstructured text or binary data such as video, audio and images.

Table storage

Table Storage is used by applications requiring storing large amounts of data storage that need additional structure. While a table stores structured data, it does not provide any way to represent relationships between the data, sometimes called a NoSQL database. You can use SQL Azure for relational database service on Windows Azure.

Queue

Queues are used for reliable, persistent messaging between applications. You can use Queues to transfer messages between applications or services in Windows Azure.

Windows Azure Drive

Windows Azure Drive allows applications to mount a Blob formatted as a single volume NTFS VHD. You can move your VHDs between private and public clouds using Windows Azure Drive.

Capabilities and Benefits of Storage

Fault-tolerance

Windows Azure Blobs, Tables and Queues stored on Windows Azure are replicated three times in the same data center for resiliency against hardware failure. No matter which storage service you use, your data will be replicated across different fault domains to increase availability.

Geo replication

Windows Azure Blobs and Tables are also geo-replicated between two data centers 100s of miles apart from each other on the same continent, to provide additional data durability in the case of a major disaster, at no additional cost.

REST and managed API’s for Storage

In addition to using Storage services for your applications running on Windows Azure, your data is accessible from virtually anywhere.

Integration with Windows Azure CDN

With one-click, the Windows Azure CDN (Content Delivery Network) dramatically boosts performance by automatically caching content near your customers or users.

Pricing and Metering for Windows Azure Storage

Standard pay-as-you-go pricing for storage

$0.14 per GB stored per month based on the daily average

$0.01 per 10,000 storage transactions

Storage utilization is calculated based on your average usage during a billing period of blob, table, queue, and Drive storage. For example, if you consistently utilized 10GB 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 5GB of storage. Storage is also metered in terms of storage transactions used to add, update, read and delete storage data

For Windows Azure Drive storage, you will be billed only for the storage space used by the page blob and the read/write transactions to the page blob. You will not be charged for read transactions that utilize the local drive cache. Windows Azure Drive usage is billed at the same rates as standard Storage and is included in these totals on your bill. There is no separate line item for Windows Azure Drive on your bill.

6-Month Plan

You can receive significant volume discounts by purchasing storage in discrete 1 TB increments for six months. A breakdown of pricing discounts is listed below. Please note, the prices below are price tiers, not graduated prices. For example, if you store 400TBs using the commitment offer your price will be $0.112 per GB per month for the full amount, not just the amount over 50TBs. For prices above 5 Petabytes per month, please contact us for assistance. For additional details on this offer, please click here.

If you intend to purchase more than 50 Terabytes, please contact us prior to completing your purchase so we can facilitate and expedite your onboarding.