We are excited to announce the preview of Azure Storage Service Encryption for data at rest. This capability is one of the features most requested by enterprise customers looking to protect sensitive data as part of their regulatory or compliance needs.

Storage Service Encryption automatically encrypts your Azure Blob storage data prior to persisting to storage, and decrypts prior to retrieval. The encryption, decryption and key management is transparent to users, requires no change to your applications, and frees your engineering team from having to implement complex key management processes.

This capability is supported for all Azure Blob storage, Block blobs, Append blobs, and Page blobs, and is enabled through configuration on each storage account. This capability is available for storage accounts created through the Azure Resource Manager (ARM). All data is encrypted using 256-bit AES encryption, also known as AES-256, one of the strongest block ciphers available. Customers can enable this feature on all available redundancy types of Azure Storage – LRS, ZRS, GRS and RA-GRS. Storage Service Encryption is also supported for both Standard and Premium Storage. There is no additional charge for enabling this feature.

As with most previews, this should not be used for production workloads until the feature becomes generally available.

To learn more please visit Storage Service Encryption.

We are excited to announce the preview of Azure Storage Service Encryption for data at rest. This capability is one of the features most requested by enterprise customers looking to protect sensitive data as part of their regulatory or compliance needs.

Storage Service Encryption automatically encrypts your Azure Blob storage data prior to persisting to storage, and decrypts prior to retrieval. The encryption, decryption and key management is transparent to users, requires no change to your applications, and frees your engineering team from having to implement complex key management processes.

This capability is supported for all Azure Blob storage, Block blobs, Append blobs, and Page blobs, and is enabled through configuration on each storage account. This capability is available for storage accounts created through the Azure Resource Manager (ARM). All data is encrypted using 256-bit AES encryption, also known as AES-256, one of the strongest block ciphers available. Customers can enable this feature on all available redundancy types of Azure Storage – LRS, ZRS, GRS and RA-GRS. Storage Service Encryption is also supported for both Standard and Premium Storage. There is no additional charge for enabling this feature.

As with most previews, this should not be used for production workloads until the feature becomes generally available.

To learn more please visit Storage Service Encryption.

We are excited to announce the preview of Azure Storage Service Encryption for data at rest. This capability is one of the features most requested by enterprise customers looking to protect sensitive data as part of their regulatory or compliance needs.

Storage Service Encryption automatically encrypts your Azure Blob storage data prior to persisting to storage, and decrypts prior to retrieval. The encryption, decryption and key management is transparent to users, requires no change to your applications, and frees your engineering team from having to implement complex key management processes.

This capability is supported for all Azure Blob storage, Block blobs, Append blobs, and Page blobs, and is enabled through configuration on each storage account. This capability is available for storage accounts created through the Azure Resource Manager (ARM). All data is encrypted using 256-bit AES encryption, also known as AES-256, one of the strongest block ciphers available. Customers can enable this feature on all available redundancy types of Azure Storage – LRS, ZRS, GRS and RA-GRS. Storage Service Encryption is also supported for both Standard and Premium Storage. There is no additional charge for enabling this feature.

As with most previews, this should not be used for production workloads until the feature becomes generally available.

To learn more please visit Storage Service Encryption.

Last year, we launched Cool Blob Storage to help customers reduce storage costs by tiering their infrequently accessed data to the Cool tier. Today we're announcing the public preview of Archive Blob Storage designed to help organizations reduce their storage costs even further by storing rarely accessed data in our lowest-priced tier yet. Furthermore, we're excited to introduce the public preview of Blob-Level Tiering enabling you to optimize storage costs by easily managing the lifecycle of your data across these tiers at the object level.

For more detail, please see the original post at Microsoft Azure Blog

(Originally posted at: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/storage-explorer-march-update/)

Today we’re happy to announce the March update of Microsoft Azure Storage Explorer (preview), which includes support for Tables and Queues.

After our first release, we received hundreds of requests asking for Table and Queue support. Based on this feedback, we’re extremely excited to share this new version of Storage Explorer with the following features:

• Table support
• Queue support
• SAS features, including SAS support for Storage Account
• Performance improvements
• Updated look and feel
• Update notifications

Tables

For tables, you’ll be able to view entities inside a container as well as write queries against them. You can also easily insert common query snippets, such as the ability to filter by partition key and row key, or retrieving based on a Timestamp period.

Once you find the entity or entities you’re looking for, you can manually edit the values of its properties or delete it. Lastly, you can export the contents of your table to a CSV file, or import existing CSV files into any table. You could also copy tables from one Storage Account to another if you’d prefer to keep the transfers server-side.

Queues

For queues, we focused on the basic features. You can peek at the most recent 32 messages. From there you can view a specific message, enqueue new messages, dequeue the top message, or clear the entire queue.

SAS features

Both tables and queues support the same SAS functionality as blob containers: you can create SAS URIs for queues and tables, and also connect to a specific queue or table by providing a SAS key.

With this release, you’ll be able to generate Shared Access Signatures for Storage Accounts. Additionally, you’ll have the ability to connect to Storage Accounts by providing a SAS URI for the Storage Account. The SAS generation and connection features are also available for Tables and Queues.

To generate a SAS URI, simply right-click on the Storage Account and select “Get Shared Access Signature…”; to attach the resource, right-click on the parent “Storage Accounts” node and select “Attach Account using SAS.”

Update notifications

Lastly, starting with this version of Storage Explorer you’ll receive notifications for new updates for the application. These will appear as an infobar message linking to the latest version on storageexplorer.com.

Summary

While we’re excited to finally share these features with you, our work is not done yet – we haven’t forgotten about File Shares! We’ll also continue to add features to Blob Containers, Tables, and Queues. If you have any suggestions or requests for features you’d like to see in Storage Explorer, you can send us feedback directly from the application.

Let us know what you think!

-The Storage Explorer Team

(Originally posted at: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/storage-explorer-march-update/)

Today we’re happy to announce the March update of Microsoft Azure Storage Explorer (preview), which includes support for Tables and Queues.

After our first release, we received hundreds of requests asking for Table and Queue support. Based on this feedback, we’re extremely excited to share this new version of Storage Explorer with the following features:

• Table support
• Queue support
• SAS features, including SAS support for Storage Account
• Performance improvements
• Updated look and feel
• Update notifications

Tables

For tables, you’ll be able to view entities inside a container as well as write queries against them. You can also easily insert common query snippets, such as the ability to filter by partition key and row key, or retrieving based on a Timestamp period.

Once you find the entity or entities you’re looking for, you can manually edit the values of its properties or delete it. Lastly, you can export the contents of your table to a CSV file, or import existing CSV files into any table. You could also copy tables from one Storage Account to another if you’d prefer to keep the transfers server-side.

Queues

For queues, we focused on the basic features. You can peek at the most recent 32 messages. From there you can view a specific message, enqueue new messages, dequeue the top message, or clear the entire queue.

SAS features

Both tables and queues support the same SAS functionality as blob containers: you can create SAS URIs for queues and tables, and also connect to a specific queue or table by providing a SAS key.

With this release, you’ll be able to generate Shared Access Signatures for Storage Accounts. Additionally, you’ll have the ability to connect to Storage Accounts by providing a SAS URI for the Storage Account. The SAS generation and connection features are also available for Tables and Queues.

To generate a SAS URI, simply right-click on the Storage Account and select “Get Shared Access Signature…”; to attach the resource, right-click on the parent “Storage Accounts” node and select “Attach Account using SAS.”

Update notifications

Lastly, starting with this version of Storage Explorer you’ll receive notifications for new updates for the application. These will appear as an infobar message linking to the latest version on storageexplorer.com.

Summary

While we’re excited to finally share these features with you, our work is not done yet – we haven’t forgotten about File Shares! We’ll also continue to add features to Blob Containers, Tables, and Queues. If you have any suggestions or requests for features you’d like to see in Storage Explorer, you can send us feedback directly from the application.

Let us know what you think!

-The Storage Explorer Team

Today we’re excited to announce the general availability of Archive Blob Storage starting at an industry leading price of $0.002 per gigabyte per month! Last year, we launched Cool Blob Storage to help customers reduce storage costs by tiering their infrequently accessed data to the Cool tier. Organizations can now reduce their storage costs even further by storing their rarely accessed data in the Archive tier. Furthermore, we’re also excited to announce the general availability of Blob-Level Tiering, which enables customers to optimize storage costs by easily managing the lifecycle of their data across these tiers at the object level.

From startups to large organizations, our customers in every industry have experienced exponential growth of their data. A significant amount of this data is rarely accessed but must be stored for a long period of time to meet either business continuity or compliance requirements; think employee data, medical records, customer information, financial records, backups, etc. Additionally, recent and coming advances in artificial intelligence and data analytics are unlocking value from data that might have previously been discarded. Customers in many industries want to keep more of these data sets for a longer period but need a scalable and cost-effective solution to do so.

“We have been working with the Azure team to preview Archive Blob Storage for our cloud archiving service for several months now.  I love how easy it is to change the storage tier on an existing object via a single API. This allows us to build Information Lifecycle Management into our application logic directly and use Archive Blob Storage to significantly decrease our total Azure Storage costs.”

-Tom Inglis, Director of Enabling Solutions at BP

For more detail, please see the original post at Microsoft Azure Blog.

Originally posted in Microsoft Azure Blog.

Data in the cloud is growing at an exponential pace, and we have been working on ways to help you manage the cost of storing this data. An important aspect of managing storage costs is tiering your data based on attributes like frequency of access, retention period, etc. A common tier of customer data is cool data which is infrequently accessed but requires similar latency and performance to hot data.

Today, we are excited to announce the general availability of Cool Blob Storage – low cost storage for cool object data. Example use cases for cool storage include backups, media content, scientific data, compliance and archival data. In general, any data which lives for a longer period of time and is accessed less than once a month is a perfect candidate for cool storage.

With the new Blob storage accounts, you will be able to choose between Hot and Cool access tiers to store object data based on its access pattern. Capabilities of Blob storage accounts include:

• Cost effective: You can now store your less frequently accessed data in the Cool access tier at a low storage cost (as low as $0.01 per GB in some regions), and your more frequently accessed data in the Hot access tier at a lower access cost. For more details on regional pricing, see​ Azure Storage Pricing.
• Compatibility: We have designed Blob storage accounts to be 100% API compatible with our existing Blob storage offering which allows you to make use of the new storage accounts in existing applications seamlessly.
• Performance: Data in both access tiers have a similar performance profile in terms of latency and throughput.
• Availability: The Hot access tier guarantees high availability of 99.9% while the Cool access tier offers a slightly lower availability of 99%. With the RA-GRS redundancy option, we provide a higher read SLA of 99.99% for the Hot access tier and 99.9% for the Cool access tier.
• Durability: Both access tiers provide the same high durability that you have come to expect from Azure Storage and the same data replication options that you use today.
• Scalability and Security: Blob storage accounts provide the same scalability and security features as our existing offering.
• Global reach: Blob storage accounts are available for use starting today in most Azure regions with additional regions coming soon. You can find the updated list of available regions on the Azure Services by Regions page.

For more details on how to start using this feature, please see our getting started documentation.

Many of you use Azure Storage via partner solutions as part of your existing data infrastructure. Here are updates from some of our partners on their support for Cool storage:

• Commvault: Commvault’s Windows/Azure Centric "Commvault Integrated Solutions Portfolio" software solution enables a single solution for enterprise data management. Commvault's native support for Azure has been a key benefit for customers considering a move to Azure and Commvault remains committed to continuing our integration and compatibility efforts with Microsoft, befitting a close relationship between the companies that has existed for over 17 years. With this new Cool Storage offering, Microsoft again makes significant enhancements to their Azure offering and we expect that this service will be an important driver of new opportunities for both Commvault and Microsoft.
• Veritas: Market leader Veritas NetBackup™ protects enterprise data in on a global scale in both management and performance - for any workload, on any storage device, located anywhere.  The proven global enterprise capabilities in NetBackup converges on and off-premise data protection with scalable, cloud-ready solutions to cover any use case.  In concert with the Microsoft announcement of Azure Cool storage, Veritas is announcing beta availability of the integrated Azure Cloud Connector in NetBackup 8.0 Beta which enables customers to test and experience the ease of use, manageability, and performance of leveraging Azure Storage as a key component of their enterprise hybrid cloud data protection strategy. Click here to go to the NetBackup 8.0 Beta registration and download website.
• SoftNAS: SoftNAS™® will soon be supporting Azure Cool storage. SoftNAS Cloud® NAS customers will get a virtually bottomless storage pool for applications and workloads that need standard file protocols like NFS, CFS/SMB, and iSCSI. By summer 2016, customers can leverage SoftNAS Cloud NAS with Azure Cool storage as an economical alternative to increasing storage costs. SoftNAS helps customers make the cloud move without changing applications while providing enterprise-class NAS features like de-duplication, compression, directory integration, encryption, snapshotting, and much more. SoftNAS StorageCenter™ console will allow a central means to choose the optimal file storage location ranging from hot (block-backed) to cool (Blob-object backed) and enables content movement to where it makes sense over the data lifecycle.
• Cohesity: Cohesity delivers the world’s first hyper-converged storage system for enterprise data.  Cohesity consolidates fragmented, inefficient islands of secondary storage into an infinitely expandable and limitless storage platform that can run both on-premises and in the public cloud.  Designed with the latest web-scale distributed systems technology, Cohesity radically simplifies existing backup, file shares, object, and dev/test storage silos by creating a unified, instantly-accessible storage pool.  The Cohesity platform seamlessly interoperates with Azure Cool storage for three primary use cases:  long-term data retention and archival, tiering of infrequently-accessed data into the cloud, and replication to provide disaster recovery. Azure Cool storage can be easily registered and assigned via Cohesity’s policy-based administration portal to any data protection workload running on the Cohesity platform.
• CloudBerry Lab: CloudBerry Backup for Microsoft Azure is designed to automate data backup to Microsoft Azure cloud storage. It is capable of compressing and encrypting the data with a user-controlled password before the data leaves the computer. It then securely transfers it to the cloud either on schedule or in real time. CloudBerry Backup also comes with file-system and image-based backup, SQL Server and MS Exchange support, as well as flexible retention policies and incremental backup. CloudBerry Backup now supports Azure Blob storage accounts for storing backup data.

The list of partners integrating with cool storage will continue to grow in the coming months.

As always, we look forward to your feedback and suggestions.

Thanks,

The Azure Storage Team.

Originally posted in Microsoft Azure Blog.

Data in the cloud is growing at an exponential pace, and we have been working on ways to help you manage the cost of storing this data. An important aspect of managing storage costs is tiering your data based on attributes like frequency of access, retention period, etc. A common tier of customer data is cool data which is infrequently accessed but requires similar latency and performance to hot data.

Today, we are excited to announce the general availability of Cool Blob Storage – low cost storage for cool object data. Example use cases for cool storage include backups, media content, scientific data, compliance and archival data. In general, any data which lives for a longer period of time and is accessed less than once a month is a perfect candidate for cool storage.

With the new Blob storage accounts, you will be able to choose between Hot and Cool access tiers to store object data based on its access pattern. Capabilities of Blob storage accounts include:

• Cost effective: You can now store your less frequently accessed data in the Cool access tier at a low storage cost (as low as $0.01 per GB in some regions), and your more frequently accessed data in the Hot access tier at a lower access cost. For more details on regional pricing, see​ Azure Storage Pricing.
• Compatibility: We have designed Blob storage accounts to be 100% API compatible with our existing Blob storage offering which allows you to make use of the new storage accounts in existing applications seamlessly.
• Performance: Data in both access tiers have a similar performance profile in terms of latency and throughput.
• Availability: The Hot access tier guarantees high availability of 99.9% while the Cool access tier offers a slightly lower availability of 99%. With the RA-GRS redundancy option, we provide a higher read SLA of 99.99% for the Hot access tier and 99.9% for the Cool access tier.
• Durability: Both access tiers provide the same high durability that you have come to expect from Azure Storage and the same data replication options that you use today.
• Scalability and Security: Blob storage accounts provide the same scalability and security features as our existing offering.
• Global reach: Blob storage accounts are available for use starting today in most Azure regions with additional regions coming soon. You can find the updated list of available regions on the Azure Services by Regions page.

For more details on how to start using this feature, please see our getting started documentation.

Many of you use Azure Storage via partner solutions as part of your existing data infrastructure. Here are updates from some of our partners on their support for Cool storage:

• Commvault: Commvault’s Windows/Azure Centric "Commvault Integrated Solutions Portfolio" software solution enables a single solution for enterprise data management. Commvault's native support for Azure has been a key benefit for customers considering a move to Azure and Commvault remains committed to continuing our integration and compatibility efforts with Microsoft, befitting a close relationship between the companies that has existed for over 17 years. With this new Cool Storage offering, Microsoft again makes significant enhancements to their Azure offering and we expect that this service will be an important driver of new opportunities for both Commvault and Microsoft.
• Veritas: Market leader Veritas NetBackup™ protects enterprise data in on a global scale in both management and performance - for any workload, on any storage device, located anywhere.  The proven global enterprise capabilities in NetBackup converges on and off-premise data protection with scalable, cloud-ready solutions to cover any use case.  In concert with the Microsoft announcement of Azure Cool storage, Veritas is announcing beta availability of the integrated Azure Cloud Connector in NetBackup 8.0 Beta which enables customers to test and experience the ease of use, manageability, and performance of leveraging Azure Storage as a key component of their enterprise hybrid cloud data protection strategy. Click here to go to the NetBackup 8.0 Beta registration and download website.
• SoftNAS: SoftNAS™® will soon be supporting Azure Cool storage. SoftNAS Cloud® NAS customers will get a virtually bottomless storage pool for applications and workloads that need standard file protocols like NFS, CFS/SMB, and iSCSI. By summer 2016, customers can leverage SoftNAS Cloud NAS with Azure Cool storage as an economical alternative to increasing storage costs. SoftNAS helps customers make the cloud move without changing applications while providing enterprise-class NAS features like de-duplication, compression, directory integration, encryption, snapshotting, and much more. SoftNAS StorageCenter™ console will allow a central means to choose the optimal file storage location ranging from hot (block-backed) to cool (Blob-object backed) and enables content movement to where it makes sense over the data lifecycle.
• Cohesity: Cohesity delivers the world’s first hyper-converged storage system for enterprise data.  Cohesity consolidates fragmented, inefficient islands of secondary storage into an infinitely expandable and limitless storage platform that can run both on-premises and in the public cloud.  Designed with the latest web-scale distributed systems technology, Cohesity radically simplifies existing backup, file shares, object, and dev/test storage silos by creating a unified, instantly-accessible storage pool.  The Cohesity platform seamlessly interoperates with Azure Cool storage for three primary use cases:  long-term data retention and archival, tiering of infrequently-accessed data into the cloud, and replication to provide disaster recovery. Azure Cool storage can be easily registered and assigned via Cohesity’s policy-based administration portal to any data protection workload running on the Cohesity platform.
• CloudBerry Lab: CloudBerry Backup for Microsoft Azure is designed to automate data backup to Microsoft Azure cloud storage. It is capable of compressing and encrypting the data with a user-controlled password before the data leaves the computer. It then securely transfers it to the cloud either on schedule or in real time. CloudBerry Backup also comes with file-system and image-based backup, SQL Server and MS Exchange support, as well as flexible retention policies and incremental backup. CloudBerry Backup now supports Azure Blob storage accounts for storing backup data.

The list of partners integrating with cool storage will continue to grow in the coming months.

As always, we look forward to your feedback and suggestions.

Thanks,

The Azure Storage Team.

Originally posted in Microsoft Azure Blog.

Data in the cloud is growing at an exponential pace, and we have been working on ways to help you manage the cost of storing this data. An important aspect of managing storage costs is tiering your data based on attributes like frequency of access, retention period, etc. A common tier of customer data is cool data which is infrequently accessed but requires similar latency and performance to hot data.

Today, we are excited to announce the general availability of Cool Blob Storage – low cost storage for cool object data. Example use cases for cool storage include backups, media content, scientific data, compliance and archival data. In general, any data which lives for a longer period of time and is accessed less than once a month is a perfect candidate for cool storage.

With the new Blob storage accounts, you will be able to choose between Hot and Cool access tiers to store object data based on its access pattern. Capabilities of Blob storage accounts include:

• Cost effective: You can now store your less frequently accessed data in the Cool access tier at a low storage cost (as low as $0.01 per GB in some regions), and your more frequently accessed data in the Hot access tier at a lower access cost. For more details on regional pricing, see​ Azure Storage Pricing.
• Compatibility: We have designed Blob storage accounts to be 100% API compatible with our existing Blob storage offering which allows you to make use of the new storage accounts in existing applications seamlessly.
• Performance: Data in both access tiers have a similar performance profile in terms of latency and throughput.
• Availability: The Hot access tier guarantees high availability of 99.9% while the Cool access tier offers a slightly lower availability of 99%. With the RA-GRS redundancy option, we provide a higher read SLA of 99.99% for the Hot access tier and 99.9% for the Cool access tier.
• Durability: Both access tiers provide the same high durability that you have come to expect from Azure Storage and the same data replication options that you use today.
• Scalability and Security: Blob storage accounts provide the same scalability and security features as our existing offering.
• Global reach: Blob storage accounts are available for use starting today in most Azure regions with additional regions coming soon. You can find the updated list of available regions on the Azure Services by Regions page.

For more details on how to start using this feature, please see our getting started documentation.

Many of you use Azure Storage via partner solutions as part of your existing data infrastructure. Here are updates from some of our partners on their support for Cool storage:

• Commvault: Commvault’s Windows/Azure Centric "Commvault Integrated Solutions Portfolio" software solution enables a single solution for enterprise data management. Commvault's native support for Azure has been a key benefit for customers considering a move to Azure and Commvault remains committed to continuing our integration and compatibility efforts with Microsoft, befitting a close relationship between the companies that has existed for over 17 years. With this new Cool Storage offering, Microsoft again makes significant enhancements to their Azure offering and we expect that this service will be an important driver of new opportunities for both Commvault and Microsoft.
• Veritas: Market leader Veritas NetBackup™ protects enterprise data in on a global scale in both management and performance - for any workload, on any storage device, located anywhere.  The proven global enterprise capabilities in NetBackup converges on and off-premise data protection with scalable, cloud-ready solutions to cover any use case.  In concert with the Microsoft announcement of Azure Cool storage, Veritas is announcing beta availability of the integrated Azure Cloud Connector in NetBackup 8.0 Beta which enables customers to test and experience the ease of use, manageability, and performance of leveraging Azure Storage as a key component of their enterprise hybrid cloud data protection strategy. Click here to go to the NetBackup 8.0 Beta registration and download website.
• SoftNAS: SoftNAS™® will soon be supporting Azure Cool storage. SoftNAS Cloud® NAS customers will get a virtually bottomless storage pool for applications and workloads that need standard file protocols like NFS, CFS/SMB, and iSCSI. By summer 2016, customers can leverage SoftNAS Cloud NAS with Azure Cool storage as an economical alternative to increasing storage costs. SoftNAS helps customers make the cloud move without changing applications while providing enterprise-class NAS features like de-duplication, compression, directory integration, encryption, snapshotting, and much more. SoftNAS StorageCenter™ console will allow a central means to choose the optimal file storage location ranging from hot (block-backed) to cool (Blob-object backed) and enables content movement to where it makes sense over the data lifecycle.
• Cohesity: Cohesity delivers the world’s first hyper-converged storage system for enterprise data.  Cohesity consolidates fragmented, inefficient islands of secondary storage into an infinitely expandable and limitless storage platform that can run both on-premises and in the public cloud.  Designed with the latest web-scale distributed systems technology, Cohesity radically simplifies existing backup, file shares, object, and dev/test storage silos by creating a unified, instantly-accessible storage pool.  The Cohesity platform seamlessly interoperates with Azure Cool storage for three primary use cases:  long-term data retention and archival, tiering of infrequently-accessed data into the cloud, and replication to provide disaster recovery. Azure Cool storage can be easily registered and assigned via Cohesity’s policy-based administration portal to any data protection workload running on the Cohesity platform.
• CloudBerry Lab: CloudBerry Backup for Microsoft Azure is designed to automate data backup to Microsoft Azure cloud storage. It is capable of compressing and encrypting the data with a user-controlled password before the data leaves the computer. It then securely transfers it to the cloud either on schedule or in real time. CloudBerry Backup also comes with file-system and image-based backup, SQL Server and MS Exchange support, as well as flexible retention policies and incremental backup. CloudBerry Backup now supports Azure Blob storage accounts for storing backup data.

The list of partners integrating with cool storage will continue to grow in the coming months.

As always, we look forward to your feedback and suggestions.

Thanks,

The Azure Storage Team.

Originally posted in Microsoft Azure Blog.

Data in the cloud is growing at an exponential pace, and we have been working on ways to help you manage the cost of storing this data. An important aspect of managing storage costs is tiering your data based on attributes like frequency of access, retention period, etc. A common tier of customer data is cool data which is infrequently accessed but requires similar latency and performance to hot data.

Today, we are excited to announce the general availability of Cool Blob Storage – low cost storage for cool object data. Example use cases for cool storage include backups, media content, scientific data, compliance and archival data. In general, any data which lives for a longer period of time and is accessed less than once a month is a perfect candidate for cool storage.

With the new Blob storage accounts, you will be able to choose between Hot and Cool access tiers to store object data based on its access pattern. Capabilities of Blob storage accounts include:

• Cost effective: You can now store your less frequently accessed data in the Cool access tier at a low storage cost (as low as $0.01 per GB in some regions), and your more frequently accessed data in the Hot access tier at a lower access cost. For more details on regional pricing, see​ Azure Storage Pricing.
• Compatibility: We have designed Blob storage accounts to be 100% API compatible with our existing Blob storage offering which allows you to make use of the new storage accounts in existing applications seamlessly.
• Performance: Data in both access tiers have a similar performance profile in terms of latency and throughput.
• Availability: The Hot access tier guarantees high availability of 99.9% while the Cool access tier offers a slightly lower availability of 99%. With the RA-GRS redundancy option, we provide a higher read SLA of 99.99% for the Hot access tier and 99.9% for the Cool access tier.
• Durability: Both access tiers provide the same high durability that you have come to expect from Azure Storage and the same data replication options that you use today.
• Scalability and Security: Blob storage accounts provide the same scalability and security features as our existing offering.
• Global reach: Blob storage accounts are available for use starting today in most Azure regions with additional regions coming soon. You can find the updated list of available regions on the Azure Services by Regions page.

For more details on how to start using this feature, please see our getting started documentation.

Many of you use Azure Storage via partner solutions as part of your existing data infrastructure. Here are updates from some of our partners on their support for Cool storage:

• Commvault: Commvault’s Windows/Azure Centric "Commvault Integrated Solutions Portfolio" software solution enables a single solution for enterprise data management. Commvault's native support for Azure has been a key benefit for customers considering a move to Azure and Commvault remains committed to continuing our integration and compatibility efforts with Microsoft, befitting a close relationship between the companies that has existed for over 17 years. With this new Cool Storage offering, Microsoft again makes significant enhancements to their Azure offering and we expect that this service will be an important driver of new opportunities for both Commvault and Microsoft.
• Veritas: Market leader Veritas NetBackup™ protects enterprise data in on a global scale in both management and performance - for any workload, on any storage device, located anywhere.  The proven global enterprise capabilities in NetBackup converges on and off-premise data protection with scalable, cloud-ready solutions to cover any use case.  In concert with the Microsoft announcement of Azure Cool storage, Veritas is announcing beta availability of the integrated Azure Cloud Connector in NetBackup 8.0 Beta which enables customers to test and experience the ease of use, manageability, and performance of leveraging Azure Storage as a key component of their enterprise hybrid cloud data protection strategy. Click here to go to the NetBackup 8.0 Beta registration and download website.
• SoftNAS: SoftNAS™® will soon be supporting Azure Cool storage. SoftNAS Cloud® NAS customers will get a virtually bottomless storage pool for applications and workloads that need standard file protocols like NFS, CFS/SMB, and iSCSI. By summer 2016, customers can leverage SoftNAS Cloud NAS with Azure Cool storage as an economical alternative to increasing storage costs. SoftNAS helps customers make the cloud move without changing applications while providing enterprise-class NAS features like de-duplication, compression, directory integration, encryption, snapshotting, and much more. SoftNAS StorageCenter™ console will allow a central means to choose the optimal file storage location ranging from hot (block-backed) to cool (Blob-object backed) and enables content movement to where it makes sense over the data lifecycle.
• Cohesity: Cohesity delivers the world’s first hyper-converged storage system for enterprise data.  Cohesity consolidates fragmented, inefficient islands of secondary storage into an infinitely expandable and limitless storage platform that can run both on-premises and in the public cloud.  Designed with the latest web-scale distributed systems technology, Cohesity radically simplifies existing backup, file shares, object, and dev/test storage silos by creating a unified, instantly-accessible storage pool.  The Cohesity platform seamlessly interoperates with Azure Cool storage for three primary use cases:  long-term data retention and archival, tiering of infrequently-accessed data into the cloud, and replication to provide disaster recovery. Azure Cool storage can be easily registered and assigned via Cohesity’s policy-based administration portal to any data protection workload running on the Cohesity platform.
• CloudBerry Lab: CloudBerry Backup for Microsoft Azure is designed to automate data backup to Microsoft Azure cloud storage. It is capable of compressing and encrypting the data with a user-controlled password before the data leaves the computer. It then securely transfers it to the cloud either on schedule or in real time. CloudBerry Backup also comes with file-system and image-based backup, SQL Server and MS Exchange support, as well as flexible retention policies and incremental backup. CloudBerry Backup now supports Azure Blob storage accounts for storing backup data.

The list of partners integrating with cool storage will continue to grow in the coming months.

As always, we look forward to your feedback and suggestions.

Thanks,

The Azure Storage Team.