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Difficulty: MediumAzure Storage Accounts, Blob, Disk, Files, and Storage Tiers

A financial institution is designing a storage solution in Azure for two types of data:

1. Daily transaction reports that must be immediately available for analysis by audit applications during the first 3030 days.
2. Yearly audit archives that are rarely accessed but must be retained for 1010 years for regulatory compliance, where a retrieval time of several hours is acceptable.

The institution wants to minimize storage costs. Which storage tier configuration should they choose?

  1. Store daily transaction reports in the Hot tier, and store yearly audit archives in the Archive tier.Answer
  2. B
    Store daily transaction reports in the Archive tier, and use a lifecycle policy to read them directly when audit applications request access.
  3. C
    Store both daily transaction reports and yearly audit archives in the Archive tier, as it is the most cost-effective tier and supports immediate data retrieval for active applications.
  4. D
    Store both types of data in Azure Disk Storage, since the customer is responsible for configuring lifecycle management and tiers at the operating system level.

Answer

Store daily transaction reports in the Hot tier, and store yearly audit archives in the Archive tier.
The Hot tier is optimized for storing data that is accessed frequently and must be immediately available, making it ideal for daily transaction reports. The Archive tier has the lowest storage costs but the highest retrieval costs and latency (taking several hours to rehydrate), which fits the requirement for yearly audit archives that are rarely accessed and can tolerate retrieval delays.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze the requirements for the daily transaction reports.
They require immediate availability for 3030 days.
This indicates an online storage tier is required, and because they are accessed daily, the Hot tier is the most cost-effective and appropriate choice.
2
Analyze the requirements for the yearly audit archives.
They are rarely accessed, must be retained for 1010 years, and can tolerate a retrieval delay of several hours.
This fits the profile of the Archive tier, which offers the lowest storage cost but requires several hours for data rehydration.
3
Compare the tier choices to find the optimal configuration.
Daily transaction reports should go to the Hot tier, and yearly audit archives should go to the Archive tier.
This configuration satisfies all availability and retrieval time requirements while minimizing overall storage costs.

Key Concept

Azure Storage Access Tiers (Hot, Cool, Cold, Archive)
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Topics

Azure Storage Accounts, Blob, Disk, Files, and Storage Tiers

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