Microsoft Azure Data FundamentalsDescribe an analytics workload on AzureHard
A data analytics team is building a new data warehouse on Azure. They have identified that a significant portion of their historical data (several petabytes) will be accessed infrequently (once a quarter) but must be retained for compliance reasons for 7 years. They want to minimize storage costs for this cold data while ensuring it remains accessible when needed. Which Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 tier is most suitable for this purpose?
- AHot tier
- BPremium tier
- CArchive tier
- DCool tier
Show answer & explanationAnswer & explanation
Correct answer: C. Archive tier
The Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 Archive tier is designed for rarely accessed data with flexible latency requirements (hours). It offers the lowest storage costs, making it ideal for long-term retention of cold data for compliance or historical analysis where immediate access is not critical.
Why the other options are wrong
- A. Hot tier is for frequently accessed data, offering the highest storage cost but lowest access cost and latency.
- B. Premium tier is for high-performance, low-latency workloads, which is overkill and expensive for rarely accessed cold data.
- D. Cool tier is for infrequently accessed data (at least 30 days), a balance between hot and archive, but not for quarterly access.
Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 Archive Tier
The lowest-cost storage tier for rarely accessed data, ideal for long-term retention and compliance archives.
- Offers the lowest storage cost per GB.
- Designed for data accessed once every few months or less.
- Data retrieval can take several hours (higher latency).
Memory trick: Hot for now, Cool for later, Archive for forever.