Azure Archive Storage Solutions for Long-Term Data Preservation

Azure Archive Storage Solutions for Long-Term Data Preservation are designed to provide a cost-effective and secure way to store data for extended periods.

These solutions are ideal for organizations that need to store large amounts of data, such as archives, historical records, or scientific research.

Data stored in Azure Archive Storage is encrypted at rest and in transit, providing an additional layer of security.

Organizations can access their data in Azure Archive Storage at any time, but be aware that retrieval times may be longer due to the cold storage nature of the service.

Expand your knowledge: What Is Azure Storage

To get started with Azure Archive Storage, you need to create a storage account and enable the archive tier.

Create a storage account by logging in to your Azure portal and navigating to your Storage account.

You can upload your data to the archive tier using Azure Storage Explorer, Azure portal, or Azure CLI.

To move Azure blobs to archive storage, follow these steps:

Once the transfer is complete, your blobs will now be stored in archive storage.

With Azure Archive Storage, you can easily manage your data by using blob-level tiering, which allows you to change an object's tier with a single click in the Azure portal or programmatically through the REST API.

You can also use lifecycle management to automatically transition your data to the desired access tier based on your specified conditions, such as expiring data at the end of its life.

To move data to the hot tier, you must synchronously copy blobs from a premium block blob storage account to a different account using the Put Block From URL API or a version of AzCopy that supports this API.

Data stored in Azure Archive Storage is highly available and secure, with flexible latency requirements, making it perfect for storing terabytes of data for only a few dollars a month.

Here are some key benefits of Azure Archive Storage:

You can access archived data through the Azure portal, REST API, Azure Storage Explorer, or Cloud Storage Manager, and can restore data to the cool or hot tier for faster access if needed.

For more insights, see: Access Azure Blob Storage

Blob lifecycle management is a rule-based policy that allows you to transition your data to the desired access tier when specified conditions are met. This can help optimize costs and ensure that your data is stored in the most cost-effective manner.

You can use blob lifecycle management to expire data at the end of its life, making it easier to manage your storage needs. This feature is especially useful for data that is no longer needed or is past its retention period.

To use blob lifecycle management, you can create a rule that automatically moves data to the archive tier after a specified number of days. This can help reduce storage costs and ensure that your data is stored in a secure and compliant manner.

Here are the access tiers available for blob data:

Keep in mind that you can't rehydrate an archived blob to an online tier by using lifecycle management policies. If you need to access archived data, you'll need to use a different method, such as copying the blob to a different tier or using the Azure portal.

To get the most out of the Stellar Cyber cold storage archive script, you'll need to meet some basic system requirements.

Python 3, specifically version 3.7 or greater, is the foundation of the script.

To interact with Azure, you'll also need the Azure CLI installed on your machine.

Additionally, the Azure CLI Storage Preview Extension is required. You can install it with the command `az extension add --name storage-blob-preview` in the Azure CLI.

Finally, before running the script, establish a connection to Azure by running `az login` in the Azure CLI.

For more insights, see: How to Keep Your Onedrive from Running Out of Storage

Azure Archive Storage is designed to keep your data secure from the start. It uses 256-bit AES encryption to safeguard your data, both in transit and at rest.

With Azure Archive Storage, you can rest assured that your data is protected by multiple layers of security, including Azure's secure data centers and 24/7 monitoring.

Azure Archive Storage is also designed to meet the most stringent regulatory requirements, including GDPR and HIPAA.

Azure Archive Storage is an ideal solution for organizations that need to store large amounts of data for long periods of time, but don't need to access that data frequently. This is particularly useful for meeting regulatory compliance requirements, where data must be retained for a specified period.

Regulations often require businesses to retain data for years, and Azure Archive Storage makes it easy to store data without incurring high costs. You can set retention policies to ensure that data is not deleted before the required retention period.

Organizations can use Azure Archive Storage for long-term backup and disaster recovery purposes, storing backups of their data in the archive tier and retrieving them when needed. This provides an additional layer of protection for data in case of a disaster.

Azure Archive Storage uses a tiered storage architecture where data is automatically moved to a lower cost tier based on its access patterns.

Data is initially stored in a hot or cool storage tier for a specific period before it's moved to the archive tier, helping to optimize the cost of storage.

The retrieval process may take several hours, depending on the amount of data you're retrieving and the retrieval option you choose.

Standard retrieval is the default option and takes several hours to complete.

Expedited retrieval takes minutes but is more expensive.

Azure Storage Archive is a game-changer for organizations that need to store large amounts of data for long periods of time.

You can save up to 80% on storage costs compared to other tiers, making it a low-cost storage option for storing rarely accessed data that doesn't need to be immediately available.

Organizations can use Azure Archive Storage to meet regulatory compliance requirements, such as retaining data for a specified period.

Healthcare organizations can also benefit from using Azure Archive Storage to store patient data for long periods without incurring high costs.

Digital media assets like photos, videos, and audio files can be stored cost-effectively using Azure Archive Storage, making it easy to keep them for years while keeping them accessible when needed.

Long-term backup and disaster recovery purposes are another common use case for Azure Archive Storage, providing an additional layer of protection for your data.

To manage your Azure Archive Storage, you can change a blob's tier to optimize storage costs. You can do this by calling the Set Blob Tier operation, either directly or via a lifecycle management policy. This is typically the best option when you're changing a blob's tier from a warmer tier to a cooler one.

Changing a blob's tier from a warmer tier to a cooler one is instantaneous. You can't call Set Blob Tier on a blob that uses an encryption scope.

If you need to rehydrate a blob from the archive tier to an online tier, you can call the Copy Blob operation to copy the blob from one tier to another. This can take up to 15 hours.

You can't rehydrate an archived blob to an online tier by using lifecycle management policies. However, you can access archived data through the Azure portal, REST API, Azure Storage Explorer or Cloud Storage Manager.

Here are the options for changing a blob's tier:

Note that changing a blob's tier from cold or cool to hot is instantaneous, but rehydrating a blob from the archive tier to an online tier can take up to 15 hours.

You can use the archive-cli.py script to apply the archive tag to data in the Stellar Cyber cold storage backup in Azure Blob Storage. This script is run daily to tag blobs for archiving.

To verify that data has been tagged with StellarBlobTier=Archive, use the Azure Console to look at the properties of any of the files in the /indices folder.

The archive-cli.py script can be set up to run on a daily basis using a cron job, which is a scheduled task that runs at a specified time.

To verify that data has been moved to the Archive Tier, check the Azure Console to see if the data has been automatically transitioned to the Archive Tier based on the lifecycle management rule.

Here's a step-by-step guide to verify tagged data:

Note that if you restored specific indices from the Archive Tier to the Hot Tier, you can use the archive-cli.py script to retag them as archive so that they are returned to the Archive Tier by lifecycle management.