Microsoft Azure Blob Storage

Both Hot and Cool Blob Storage is supported. Refer to Microsoft Azure documentation for the differences between these storage types.

Container Name – The name of a Microsoft Azure blob container.
Account Name – The Microsoft Azure account name.
Secret Access Key – The Microsoft Azure account key.
Endpoint – The endpoint name of the service. The default value for iscore.windows.net. Normally, this value should not be changed. The port for the endpoint can be customized by adding the port after the URL, using a colon (:) separator. The default port is 80.
Use HTTPS – Use HTTPS to connect with the storage node. If this option is not selected, HTTP will be used instead.

Direct Mode – Data is uploaded and downloaded directly to and from the storage node and not via the portal. If direct mode is defined for the storage node, CTERA recommends setting the deduplication method to fixed blocks and keeping the default 4MB fixed block size. For details, see Default Settings for New Folder Groups.

Using Tiering For CTERA Portal Storage

Each object in Azure Blob Storage has an access tier associated with it:
Hot – Optimized for storing data that is accessed frequently.
Cool – Optimized for storing data that is infrequently accessed and stored for at least 30 days.
Archive – Optimized for storing data that is rarely accessed and stored for at least 180 days with flexible latency requirements (on the order of hours).
CTERA Portal Azure Blob Storage can use both** hot** and** cool** tiers. Data in the cool access tier can tolerate slightly lower availability, but still requires high durability, retrieval latency, and throughput characteristics similar to hot data. For cool data, a slightly lower availability service-level agreement (SLA) and higher access costs compared to hot data are acceptable trade-offs for lower storage costs. You configure your Azure Blob Storage bucket to tier data that is not frequently accessed in the cool tier with Azure Blob Storage lifecycle management to create a rule-based policy to transition your data to the best access tier. For more details, see https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-blob-storage-lifecycle-management-now-generally-available/.
For example, the following sample policy manages the lifecycle for such data. It applies to block blobs in container portalsn and tiers tier blobs to cool storage 7 days after the last modification.

{
	"rules": [
	{
		"name": "rulePortalsn",
		"enabled": true,
		"type": "Lifecycle",
		"definition": {
			"filters": {
				"blobTypes": [ "blockBlob" ],
				"prefixMatch": [ "portalsn" ]
			},
			"actions": {
				"baseBlob": {
					"tierToCool": { "daysAfterModificationGreaterThan": 7 },
				}
			}
		}
	}
	]
}