Instructor: So let's talk about

a few of the cool other features

that storage accounts support

for blobs and other file types.

Let's talk about lifecycle management.

If we go on the Azure portal

on the storage account under Data management,

we'll see an option called Lifecycle management.

Now, lifecycle management,

and I think I've mentioned this before in this course,

is the ability to move data

from a more expensive pricing tier

down to cheaper tiers as the files get older effectively.

So for log files and backup files,

things that have less value to you as they get older,

but you might still want to keep, you can move them

to cooler or colder levels of storage

and save significant amounts of money.

So this, let's look at this.

I'm going to click on Add a rule.

Give the rule a name.

I'm going to call this the Saving Money Rule.

And I have the option of applying the rule

to all blobs in the entire storage account,

or to set some type of filter so that only blobs

in a certain container get applied.

I also get to choose which type of blobs get picked up.

Now, one of the interesting parts

is whether I want this to operate on

the blobs themselves, snapshots,

which we'll talk about in the section coming

in terms of Azure files and points in time recovery

for Azure files or versions of files.

So imagine you've turned on versioning

and over six months, nine months, some of the older versions

become less and less important to you.

You can actually just save money

by storing the older versions in cooler

or colder storage that you need in case of emergency,

but you're not likely to access frequently.

So I'm going to do this based on base blobs

just for this example.

Now what we're setting up here is a rule

that says if the blob was last modified

more than so many days ago, let's say more than 30 days ago,

then what do we want to happen to it?

Now we can just delete it.

So if it's a daily log file,

then maybe you don't need to keep more than 30 days

of daily log files.

And so on the 31st day,

this lifecycle management rule will delete the file,

and that's perfectly fine too.

Or maybe you just want to move it from hot storage

to cool storage,

or even as far as going to cold storage,

if you really don't think you're going to need this file

after 30 days.

Now notice some of the comments here.

I haven't mentioned it before in this course,

but as you get into cool, cold and archive,

there is some minimum charges

that come into play.

So when you move a file into cool storage,

you're going to be charged a minimum of 30 days

at that rate.

So you can't just move a file into cool storage for 24 hours

and then delete the file

and expect to save money just for that one day.

You've got a minimum terms of the charge.

You can still delete the file,

but you'll be charged for the full 30 days.

Cold storage is for 90 days,

and archive storage is going to minimum charge you 180 days

at that lowest rate.

But remember, archive storage can be 5%

of the cost of hot storage.

So you're saving a significant amount of money,

and even if you store it just for a month,

you're still saving money at that level.

So as we can see, lifecycle management is where you go.

If you see this on the exam

and it's asking about setting up a job

to automatically move blobs to save money,

then you should be thinking about lifecycle management

as being the easiest way to do that.