SOLVED: Azure General Purpose v2 Storage Pricing Demystified

If you are new to Azure, the wide variety of pricing can be overwhelming (for us too!), so we reviewed the numbers to come up with some simplified calculations.

Yes, we know these are oversimplifications but if you just need to wrap your head around the scale, these metrics should help.

HOT vs COOL PRICING

• Hot is 80% more expensive than Cool storage
• Hot is nearly free for read’s, while Cool costs about one and half cents per GB
• Both Hot and Cool are nearly free to write

REDUNDANCY – PRICING

• Locale Redundant (LRS) is 25% cheaper than Zone Redundant (ZRS)
• Zone Redundant (ZRS) is 40% cheaper than Geographically Redundant (GRS)
• Geographically Redundant (GRS) is the same price as Read-Access Geographically Redundant (RA-GRS)

REDUNDANCY – RELIABILITY

• Locale Redundant (LRS) = 11 “9’s” durable with data kept in multiple copies within a single datacenter
• Zone Redundant (ZRS) = 12 “9’s” durable with data kept in multiple copies within a multiple datacenters in the same region
• Geographically Redundant (GRS) = 16 “9’s” durable with data kept in multiple copies within a multiple datacenter in different countries

PERFORMANCE PRICING

• Standard performance data is on on spinning disks which Premium performance data is stored on SSD’s

BLOB STORAGE vs GENERAL PURPOSE PRICING

• The ONLY price difference between Blog and General Purpose v2 storage is in COOL the is a tiny one third of one cent cost per gb of write

GENERAL PURPOSE V1 vs GENERAL PURPOSE V2 PRICING

• General Purpose V2 is 40% more expensive that V1 storage
• General Purpose V1 will be retired in the coming years so just use V2

AZURE STORAGE PRICING SUMMARY

• General Purpose v1 enables access to Block Blobs, Page Blobs, Files, Queues, and Tables—offering our lowest transaction prices but with higher storage prices. General Purpose v1 accounts do not provide access to Cool and Archive storage.
• General Purpose v2 provides access to the latest Azure storage features, including Cool and Archive storage, with pricing optimized for the lowest GB storage prices. These accounts provide access to Block Blobs, Page Blobs, Files, and Queues
• Blob Storage accounts provide access to the latest features, but not to Page Blobs, Files, Queues, or Tables. While there are price differences between General Purpose v2 and Blob Storage to consider, we recommend that most users use General Purpose v2
• Premium Blob Storage provides access to block blobs and append blobs with pricing optimized for workloads with high transaction rates. Premium Blob Storage uses high-performance solid-state drives (SSD), designed to provide low and consistent latency for I/O-intensive workload

These descriptions were taken directly from the Microsoft Azure Storage Pricing Calculator and that is where you need to go to estimate your real costs.