Best practices - Azure Blob storage accounts with StorSimple

• Initially set the access tier to hot. Keep the access tier set to hot until any initial data migrations are complete and the account has a significant amount of infrequently accessed data. Then consider switching to cool. The Azure hot storage tier is optimized for storing data that is accessed frequently. The Azure cool storage tier is optimized for storing data that is infrequently accessed and stored for at least 30 days. The Azure archive storage tier is optimized for storing data that is rarely accessed and stored for at least 180 days
• Evaluate your existing usage pattern to determine whether you will benefit from using a cool storage account. To learn how Azure Storage metrics can help you to understand your storage usage pattern, click here.
• Consider configuring your StorSimple volume to use 512K chunk sizes. StorSimple uses 64K chunks of data by default. Doing this reduces the number of transactions and transaction fees you will incur at the possible expense of lower deduplication. To do this check the box for “less frequently accessed archival data” when creating a volume.
• Scenarios that involve a lot of cloud data access, such as using the StorSimple Cloud Appliance for dev/test or research, are better suited for hot storage.
• If you expect to clone data often you should choose hot storage.

To configure a StorSimple appliance with cool Blob storage:

1. Create a Blob storage account.
2. Configure your storage account with StorSimple.