When we talk about blob storage, we talk about the three different tiers – hot, cool or archive – for delegating the importance of data and how accessible it is. The challenge has been that when we picked the tier that was pretty much the end of story.

What we want is have our data accessible when and where we need it as it can take some time to pull from cool and archive tiers, as well as be costlier to retrieve. Also, with the more expensive hot tier, data can sit there unnecessarily, and we need a way to move it out after it becomes static or stale.

Here’s some good news! Microsoft recently introduced the public preview of Blob Storage Lifecycle Management. This now makes it easier to manage and automate that movement of data by offering a rule-based policy which you can use to transition your data to the best access tier, as well as expire data at the end of its lifecycle.

This great new toolset allows capability and flexibility to define rules for transitioning blobs to a cooler storage. You can also delete blobs by defining how long a blob should live there, define rules to be executed daily or apply rules to storage containers or subsets of blobs, thus allowing you to access certain blob containers and delete others that you specify based on how you’re moving that data around.

So, you can set up a scenario where data hasn’t been accessed in 3 months and it’s set to be transitioned from hot storage to cool, but then it sits there for 6 more months. You then want to be able to move that data off to archive. These are settings you can change based on the last modification date of the file.

You also can delete blob snapshots that have become stale after a defined period of time. Maybe you set it to delete after 120 days or maybe blobs that haven’t been accessed for a several year period—seven years being the magic number for audits and such.

Microsoft is great at listening to what users have to say and to keep evolving and adding more capability to the technology. If you love data, Azure and Azure Blob Storage as much as I do, let me know by sharing this video.