Azure Blob access time tracking and access time-based lifecycle management preview

Azure Blob access time tracking and access time-based lifecycle management preview

Some data in Azure Blob storage is written once and read many times after that. To accurately manage the lifecycle of these data, it is crucial to know the last access/read time.

The 17^th September, Microsoft announced the public preview of blob access time tracking and access time-based lifecycle management.

Once access time tracking is enabled, each blob has a new property called last access time which is updated when the blob is read.  

Azure Blob lifecycle management supports using last access time as a filter to transition data betwen access tiers and manage data retention. You can minimize your storage cost automatically by setting up a policy based on last access time to:

• Transition your data from a hotter access tier to a cooler access tier (hot to cool, cool to archive, or hot to archive) if there is no access for a period.
• Transition your data from the cool tier to the hot tier immediately if there is an access on the data.
• Delete your data if there is no access for an extended period.

The preview is available in France Central, Canada East, and Canada Central regions.

It is free to turn on access time tracking for your storage accounts.

Customers are charged an operation which is categorized as “other operation” whenever last access time is updated. It is free to set up lifecycle managment policies for your storage accounts.

Customers are charged the regular operation cost for the Set Blob Tier API calls. Delete operation is free. For more information about pricing, see Block Blob pricing.