Azure Block Storage - Hot or Cold

[bcscholl]

What is everyone using for Azure Blob storage? Hot or Cold?

Hot storage doesn't look to be to terribly expensive, we are wondering if it is needed. What are the pros/cons between using Hot / Cold?

[Gostev]

Cold is better for when your Capacity Tier Move policy window is configured in the way so that only GFS backups are offloaded.
Hot is better for all other use cases, as Cold has higher API costs, so you don't want too many things moving or changing.

[bcscholl]

We currently have Backup Copy Jobs moving GFS points (Set to 0 days on the SOBR) to cold storage.

We recently upgraded to Version 10 looking to use one single backup job with GFS to SOBR. We were hoping to keep 60 days local and GFS points in Azure. Will GFS points be sent regardless of the Capacity Tier (Move backup files older than) setting? If not, we would then need to use the Copy Option, which sounds like maybe it would be better to use Hot Storage?

[Gostev]

Yes, for immediate copies you will want Hot storage most likely. I did not do the math for Azure, but this is the case with Amazon.

[veremin]

Then, you need to increase operational restore window in Capacity Tier settings (SOBR wizard), set it 61 days or higher.

With the currently configured settings (operational restore window: 0; daily retention: 60; GFS: enabled):

- there will be a new full backup created each week (GFS)
- this GFS full will seal previous backup chain or will make it inactive
- inactive backup chain becomes subject to offload to object storage

Thanks!

[bcscholl]

Veremin, we currently have two jobs. One backup job going to local storage, no GFS. One backup copy job set to store 6 restore points and GFS points, going to SOBR set to move backups older than 0 days.

We are looking to consolidate the process to one job (if possible) to one Backup Job where at lease the GFS points are set move out to Azure. Is this where we would set
-SOBR to : Move older than 61
-Backup Job to : 60 with GFS

When would GFS points (synthetic full- Friday) be offloaded to Azure?

Thanks,

[veremin]

In this case they will be offloaded as soon as they fall out of the specified operational restore window (60 days). Thanks!

[bcscholl]

OK, so the solution to keep 60 Days of local backups and also get off-site GFS ?

Two Jobs
-One backup job to local repository for 60 days
-One backup copy job to SOBR (where SOBR is set to 0 )

One Job:
-One backup job to SOBR (where SOBR is set to 61) + Copy Backups to object storage as soon as they are created.

[veremin]

Correct. Thanks!