What is Azure Cloud storage?
Microsoft Azure, formerly known as Windows Azure, provides a range of cloud storage solutions for data that is completely tailored and suited to a business’s scalability, requirements and budget.
Azure prices vary in cost depending on the type of cloud storage system you have opted for. Azure cloud storage ranges from the blob, files, queues, and tables to managed disks and within each of these services you need to take into account the storage type, level of performance and whether your requirements are met — as this all contributes to the overall azure price (TechTarget).
Cloud storage Microsoft Azure is an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and a Platform as a Service (PaaS) that has the ability to be used as a tool to replace or supplement your on-premise servers. When migrating over to the cloud through the use of Azure cloud file storage systems, you will adopt the following advantages; speed and flexibility, minimised costs, performance, and reliability.
Azure storage pricing
Azure storage account pricing is heavily determined by the storage’s tier, size and payment method (pay-as-you-go or reserved capacity). It also depends on the type of product you choose, pricing can be as low as 3p per hour and you only pay for the memory that you use, the volume of storage consumed and vCPU (UKCloud).
We have outlined some examples below of azure storage pricing:
Azure Blob Cool (pay-as-you-go)
£0.00800 per GB (first 50 TB / month)
Azure Blob Cool (3-year reserved capacity)
£541 (100 TB / month)
Azure Files Cool (pay-as-you-go)
£0.0120 per used GiB* (GiB / month)
Azure Files Cool (3-year reserved capacity)
£81.09 (10 TiB / month)
*data and Azure pricing derived from Microsoft Azure.
Data migration from on premise to Azure cloud
Cloud storage Microsoft Azure is a great way to host your databases whilst reducing costs and increasing the performance of your IT infrastructure. Azure cloud contributes to higher organisation productivity, strong cyber security and reduces overheads.
Once you have decided that you are ready to migrate your data over from on-premise to Azure cloud, you just need to:
Check compatibility
Before you begin the migration process, it is important for you to check whether your on-premise database is compatible with Azure.
Choose an Azure service model that fits your requirements
There are three main models to choose from IaaS (infrastructure as a service) PaaS (platform as a service and SaaS (software as a service).
Choose the correct service tier
To manage your costs efficiently and maximise your azure database performance, determine the level of service that suits your current requirements.
Determine your level of disaster recovery
Should the worst case scenario happen, choose the right disaster recovery level that matches your recovery point objective (RTO) and how much data loss you can allow for (RTO).
Create a migration strategy
Your migration strategy needs to take into account refactor and repackage whilst also allowing for some downtime to occur as the migration process occurs.
Test migration
Prior to officially migrating your data from your on-premise system to azure cloud, you need to trial your migration strategy and check that the process works as expected. This is the ideal exercise to identify any possible issues that you may need to resolve during the live migration i.e. errors and connection issues.
Migrate your database
Once you have established your azure cloud storage system and tested the migration process, you are ready to officially migrate your database over to Azure cloud.
Azure cloud is a great solution to keeping your database cyber secure, promoting efficiency within your organisation and cutting down on costs. For more advice on migrating over to the Azure cloud, visit our service page or contact us!
