Important: This tool is designed to estimate the potential savings when enabling Azure NetApp Files storage with cool access, Azure NetApp Files reserved capacity and Azure NetApp Files snapshots.
Azure NetApp Files delivers advanced storage cost savings by leveraging automated data tiering, space-efficient snapshots and reserved capacity pricing based on Azure reservations.
These features can work together or independently to significantly improve the effective price of Azure NetApp Files. Effective pricing reflects the cost you actually incur for storage after applying built-in efficiencies and discounts. These effective capacity and pricing capabilities directly reduce the $/GiB/month, enabling you to manage your storage expenses more effectively.
The Flexible service level represents a transformative shift in cloud storage consumption by decoupling storage capacity (measured in TiB) and throughput (measured in MiB/sec). This approach offers significant advantages not only for high-performance workload scenarios but also for capacity-heavy workloads with lower performance demands, where organizations can achieve substantial capacity cost savings.
Instructions/Help
Begin by entering
- Active data size: Enter in the amount of data you plan to store on Azure NetApp Files.
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Service level: Choose between the available service levels based on your application workload profile. Use sizing tools available at https://aka.ms/anftools to determine your optimal choice.
Throughput: When choosing the Flexible service level throughput will become available. The first 128 MiB/s of throughput, known as the baseline, is included in the Flexible service level. You can increase in increments of 1MiB/s with the maximum throughput being 5 x 128 x the size of the capacity pool in TiB. For more information see Flexible service level throughput examples
Under cool access adjust the following parameters:
- Cool data: How much data do you expect to move to the cool tier?
- Cool data retrieval: How much data are you likely to retrieve back from the cool tier to the hot tier? The higher the value, the higher the potential network transfer fees.
- Currently not available for use with the Flexible Service level
Under snapshots adjust the following parameters:
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Daily snapshot retention: How many daily snapshots do you want to keep? (assuming one daily snapshot at e.g. midnight)
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Daily change rate: How much does the data change daily? (This means block-level change rates)
Under Reserved Capacity adjust the following parameter:
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Reserved capacity term? How long of a commitment for storage capacity do you want to have? (Savings are tied to the term and the service level)
- Currently not available for use with the Flexible service level
Note: Your actual effective pricing will vary depending on several factors.
For Azure NetApp Files storage with cool access these factors may include, but are not limited to:
- actual size of data marked as "cold"
- duration of data movement to the cool tier
- actual size of data read back from the cool tier
For Azure NetApp Files reserved capacity these factors may include, but are not limited to:
- service level used
- capacity increment chosen
- term length
For Azure NetApp Files snapshots these factors may include, but are not limited to:
- number of snapshots taken
- daily data change rate
For the Flexible service level, we are only estimating the cost of the flexible service level (Active Data Size and Throughput). Cool Access and Reserved Capacity are not available at this time
Below is a breakdown of what the pricing means
Logical list pricing:
Pricing without cool access, reserved capacity or custom discount, and snapshots
Logical data size [TiB] = Effective data size [TiB] = Data in hot tier [TiB] = Active Data Size
List price per GiB per month = “Logical list price / GiB”
List price per total month = Logical data size [TiB] x List price per GiB per month
Effective discounted price:
Pricing with cool access, reserved capacity or custom discount, but without snapshots
Logical data size [TiB] = Effective data size [TiB] = Active Data Size
Data in hot tier [TiB] = Active Data Size x (1 – “Cold data %”)
Effective price total per month:
- No custom data is applied: Effective price total per month = Data in hot tier [TiB] x (1 – Reserved capacity discount)
- Custom discount applied: Effective price total per month = Data in hot tier [TiB] x (1 – Custom discount)
Effective price per GiB per month = Effective price total per month / Effective data size [TiB]
Effective capacity price:
Pricing with cool access, reserved capacity or custom discount, and snapshots
Logical data size [TiB] = Active Data Size + snap delta
- snap delta depends on the daily change rate and the number of daily snapshots.
- For the first snapshot, the change rate applies to Active Data Size.
- For the subsequent snapshots, the change rate applies to the total of Active Data Size and the size of the previous daily snapshots.
Effective data size [TiB] = Active Data Size (Logical active file system) + virtual snapshot capacity
Effective price total per month = Provisioned capacity x “Logical list price / GiB”
Effective price per GiB per month = Effective price total per month / Effective data size [TiB]
To understand the difference between “snap delta vs. virtual snapshot capacity", here are some explanations on how Azure NetApp Files snapshots work:
An Azure NetApp Files snapshot is a copy of just the pointers from the active file system at a particular point in time. No data is read, written or coped to disk, so it is created almost instantaneously without performance impact and without consuming additional disk space
An Azure NetApp Files snapshot simply manipulates block pointers. Actual data blocks aren’t copied. Just the pointers from the active file system at a particular point in time without performance impact, which results in a very small disk space consumption in comparison with a copy of the active data.
As such, snapshots are efficient in the time needed to create them: they are near-instantaneous, regardless of volume size. Snapshots are also efficient in storage space: only delta blocks between snapshots and the active volume are kept. They are also efficient in the time needed to restore them: only a redirection of the pointers to the blocks at the time when the snapshot was taken.
For more details about Azure NetApp Files snapshots, please refer to this article and to the video in this blog post.
The snapshots’ physical capacity is small and depends on the change rate and the number of snapshots. This is what is called snap delta in Azure NetApp Files effective price estimator.
The amount of data accessible by the snapshots is beyond what is being physically stored. It is called virtual snapshot capacity in Azure NetApp Files effective price estimator. To a user or application, a snapshot is a logical representation of the filesystem in the state it was in when the snapshot was taken. The representation is a composite of live data blocks from the snapshot.
Provisioned capacity = Logical active file system + snap delta
Effective capacity = Provisioned capacity + virtual snapshot capacity
The pricing is based on the provisioned capacity, which results in a lower effective cost per GiB.
For more information on how Azure NetApp Files helps you optimize and lower your storage costs check out the following information:
Azure NetApp Files storage with cool access
Azure NetApp Files reserved capacity
Azure NetApp Files snapshots
