Azure Pricing

[blu4]

Hi all,

 

Me and my network manager are trying to figure out Azure pricing. What we want to do is simply copy a backup to the cloud. Every week. That's it. We are unsure if we need blob storage or file storage. The blob storage is a low cheaper than file storage. We have 5TB of data. Can someone explain please?

[Steve21]

That depends what you want to do with it when in the cloud.

 

For example blobs can't be mounted to virtual machines in the cloud, file's can.

 

Honestly though at my last look it's still stupidly expensive to backup to Azure As you still pay for transcations and bandwidth on top)

 

Steve

[Blue_Cookeh]

Look at Amazon Glacier. Very cheap to transfer up to, a bit more expensive when you need to pull it down (hopefully never).

[blu4]

That depends what you want to do with it when in the cloud.

 

For example blobs can't be mounted to virtual machines in the cloud, file's can.

 

Honestly though at my last look it's still stupidly expensive to backup to Azure As you still pay for transcations and bandwidth on top)

 

Steve

 

I'm having real trouble understanding those "transactions". What are those? Is is a request to copy data to the cloud? So, a single file copy would be 1 transaction?

[SwedishChef]

As a school you are entitled to Google Apps for Education, I played around with the following......

 

Very roughly on my backup server I created a Folder and installed Google Drive Sync (you can Specify the Folder to Sync), I then ran a backup copy job to this folder and it syn'cd to Google Overnight using little used upload bandwidth, and unlimited storage ;-)....for free, it was RAW and worked well, just needed to be kept an eye on. (I did need to purchase AlwaysUp to run the Google Drive Sync as the Backup User)

 

More reliable was that we also have a QNAP which comes with an app to backup to google drive......this means you can use NFS iSCSI etc etc to use the QNAP as a target and then backup/sync to a google drive space, this worked better as I was able to throttle bandwidth exclude files etc etc.

 

https://www.qnap.com/i/uk/business_solutions/con_show.php?op=showone&cid=26

 

ps: I'll be at BETT should anyone want to discuss this further,or ask any questions ;-)

Edited January 13, 2016 by SwedishChef

[clockend25]

I'm looking at Azure pricing as well at the moment with a view to extending our DPM backups into the cloud. The pricing isn't very clear at all. I'm thinking of starting small with maybe our SIMS server and seeing how that works out cost wise as a gauge, with a view to adding more later if it is viable.

[Steve21]

I'm having real trouble understanding those "transactions". What are those? Is is a request to copy data to the cloud? So, a single file copy would be 1 transaction?

 

Nope nope nope, MS can't make it that easy haha

 

It's long winded and faff, if you want to read about it: https://msdn.microsoft.com/library/azure/ee691964.aspx?f=255&MSPPError=-2147217396

 

(This is assuming it hasn't changed since I looked at it last)

 

But as an example, Anything larger than 32MB gets split into blocks blobs, so if you have a 1TB VM for example, it'd be 32768 transactions (or more if you need to retry any parts).

 

So for 1TB + 32768 transaction units you'd get a single upload to the server. If for example you wanted to overwrite that (e.g. new backup) you'd need another 32768 units etc.

 

Might want to double check that's still the case but at least was when I looked, thus you either have a monthly offsite backup, or start paying silly amounts for transactions even if not the storage side

 

Steve

[PhilNeal]

We're using Azure to host SIMS and it is cost effective - however beware it is very easy to run up unexpected bills if you forget to turn down resources when you don't require them. One of our teams ran up a £7K bill as they didn't turn off resources over the Christmas break.