Azure Storage Accounts

glenimp617

glenimp617

glenimp617

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I need to purchase 50TB of Azure cold blob storage for my company. When creating a storage account, which account is best to use? Ideally not mine surely, as how would the other admins manage it.

The costings come from our Microsoft partner who invoice us for azure credits so at least I don't need credit card details.

Thanks!!
 
Not entirely sure I understand your context, but just get/add a new subscription or delegate roles to other users within your existing subscription.

Probably best you engage with your MS Partner to discuss options.
 
khrall said:
Not entirely sure I understand your context, but just get/add a new subscription or delegate roles to other users within your existing subscription.

Probably best you engage with your MS Partner to discuss options.
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I think I have made a bit of a mistake with my question. Looking at it again, I think it's the main Azure account you first create to get started.
 
Hellsmk2 said:
Pretty much the recommendation currently is to use general purpose v2 full stop (for storage).
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Completely depends on the use case. I wouldn't want to be paying the GPv2 premium on an archive tier of data, equally I wouldn't want to be paying the inflated data egress cost having put a regularly accessed resource in cold blob.
 
It's for cloud backups over buying a replacement for an end of life tape library and all new tapes.

We already have replicated off site backups on sans.

I hope.... Well never have to drag this data back
 
TheOracle said:
It's for cloud backups over buying a replacement for an end of life tape library and all new tapes.

We already have replicated off site backups on sans.

I hope.... Well never have to drag this data back
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In that case, also consider how your backup software may access the data. Cool blob has double the read and write cost of hot blob for instance, but it costs more per GB. It becomes a balancing act.
 
Have you got an azure login already? If not get one created and you can get the sub linked to your VL Sub. Once done you may become the owner etc but that can be sorted with roles etc.
 
teaboy5 said:
Have you got an azure login already? If not get one created and you can get the sub linked to your VL Sub. Once done you may become the owner etc but that can be sorted with roles etc.
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I can login to azure but when I try and create the storage it seems to be asking me to create another account with payment details. Unsure if it should be me or a generic name on the account. What if I leave the company?
 
TheOracle said:
I can login to azure but when I try and create the storage it seems to be asking me to create another account with payment details. Unsure if it should be me or a generic name on the account. What if I leave the company?
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If you're being billed via a partner, you normally have to set up the initial Azure account via the partners own portal, and not on your own. Each partner will have a different method, so you're best off talking to them direct for assistance. Most will have a team who will walk you though the process.

The end result should be an azure login that won't ask you for payment every time you create an object. :)
 
Hellsmk2 said:
If you're being billed via a partner, you normally have to set up the initial Azure account via the partners own portal, and not on your own. Each partner will have a different method, so you're best off talking to them direct for assistance. Most will have a team who will walk you though the process.

The end result should be an azure login that won't ask you for payment every time you create an object. :)
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Thanks I'll give them a call
 
I'm curious: how much does this 50TB cost per year, how much would it cost to upload it (the initial backup), and how much would it cost to download it (in case of 2x disasters). Also genuinely curious, why do you need a 3rd copy if you have a 2nd copy off-site? 50TB isn't a lot, but I'm always interested about others' perceptions of the value of data and the need to have multiple copies of it.
 
rotor said:
I'm curious: how much does this 50TB cost per year, how much would it cost to upload it (the initial backup), and how much would it cost to download it (in case of 2x disasters). Also genuinely curious, why do you need a 3rd copy if you have a 2nd copy off-site? 50TB isn't a lot, but I'm always interested about others' perceptions of the value of data and the need to have multiple copies of it.
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Tape drive replacement. It's 8 years old and we're out of tapes. Plus, tapes have a shelf life so it's at the point of getting expensive.

The second offsite storage we have will only replicate the main backup san, so no real long term archiving solution.

Having Azure blob storage also means a much quicker route to backing up onedrive/o365/mailboxes/teams/sharepoint etc etc as we'll stick a backup node in azure as a VM for that.

The costs I'm getting are that we have to pay for a block of credit (£900) to use within a 12 month cycle. If we go under, we lose it, over it and we are billed monthly. The costs IIRC, were something like £480 for the 50TB and no cost for uploading.
Downloading was around £900, but I calculated that using the archive tier and have decided on cold instead.

for that kinda money, it's a no brainer.

Over time the data will grow obviously to a point before we hit retention and recycle it but I'm keen to go this route. I know our tape library cost us a small fortune....and we only have the one at a single site (another failure point).
 
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Have you performed a TCO review? I see a lot of decisions about cloud, how it will save the day and it's the cheaper solution. Think it's still the number one reason for entry into cloud, and also the number one entry for exit.

A small and pedantic list -
Data Encryption, are you happy to have Microsoft handle the keys? Key handling has more cost and risk association.
Old TL and associated hardware. Is this going to be maintained? What's happening to the old TL contents, is it to be seeded into Azure?
Restoration / Disaster recovery testing and associated compliance policy updates and associated additional controls (ie PCI / Cyber Essentials scope increase).
 
TheOracle said:
Having Azure blob storage also means a much quicker route to backing up onedrive/o365/mailboxes/teams/sharepoint etc etc as we'll stick a backup node in azure as a VM for that.
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I've never been a fan of this, backing up Microsoft online products to Azure. Whilst I appreciate the storage will be in different locations, I prefer to have my backups out of a possibly related fault domain.
 
TheOracle said:
for that kinda money, it's a no brainer.
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Fair enough. I just find it surprising how often I hear people saying that cloud is cheaper, but I rarely see evidence that it is actually cheaper. The vendors after all are making a very good profit!
 
rotor said:
Fair enough. I just find it surprising how often I hear people saying that cloud is cheaper, but I rarely see evidence that it is actually cheaper. The vendors after all are making a very good profit!
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I'm still going to get costs for a new tape library and all new tapes just to compare.
 
I’ve seen a lot of cloud TCO costs done by fudging the figures one way or the other as well - e.g. comparing an employee taking a box of tapes home once a week with an actual offsite backup that runs on a schedule and can be audited. Fair enough if a bloke taking some tapes home in a bag is enough to satisfy your requirements, but it’s not a like-for-like comparison, and to put 50TB into somewhere like Iron Mountain will be really expensive in comparison to a storage bucket.
 
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