Offline access tier for blobs, cheapest to store yet dearest to access. Reading a blob means rehydrating it first, which can take as long as 15 hours.
Also called tier.
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In the Ultra Transcenders books
Each book explains Archive in context, with comparison tables and the common traps.
Terms in this definition
- Access tier
Setting for block blobs in standard accounts (Hot, Cool, Cold or Archive). Cooler tiers cost less to store but more to access.
- BLOB
Short for binary large object: raw binary data, like pictures, audio, video or documents, that only an application can make sense of. Azure keeps these files as blobs in Blob Storage.
- FIRST
A DAX function available only inside visual calculations. It fetches the value at the start of one axis of the visual's matrix, which makes it handy for comparing each point with the first; its opposite is LAST.
Related terms
- AD DS tier model
Older administration model keeping credentials within their tier: Tier 0 for identity systems like DCs, Tier 1 for servers, Tier 2 for workstations. Superseded by the enterprise access model.
- AI gateway in Azure API Management
Collection of API Management gateway capabilities, offered in every tier rather than as its own product, for placing model APIs, MCP servers and A2A agent APIs behind caller authentication, token metering and content screening.
- Analytics tier
Hot data tier of Microsoft Sentinel supporting hunting, detections and every Sentinel feature; its analytics retention can be extended to as much as two years.
- API Management
Azure's API gateway, where policies like rate limits, quotas, ip-filter and validate-jwt are defined once and apply to every API. Production VNet injection is offered in the Premium tier.
- App Service plan
Billing unit providing the compute, defined by region, OS, pricing tier and instance size and count, on which one or more apps run. Separate plans are needed for Linux and Windows apps.
- Application Gateway WAF tier
Tier of Application Gateway that brings OWASP Core Rule Set protection, now WAF_v2 since the v1 WAF tier retired on 28 April 2026. No WAF is included with the Standard tier.
- Archive tier
An offline blob access tier offering the cheapest storage, meant for data that is hardly ever read. Archived blobs must first be rehydrated to the Hot, Cool or Cold tier, which may take as long as 15 hours, before you can read or change them, and ZRS, GZRS and RA-GZRS accounts can't use this tier.
- Azure Container Registry SKUs
Azure Container Registry comes in Basic, Standard and Premium. Every tier includes ACR Tasks and the admin user; private endpoints, content trust, connected registries and dedicated data endpoints are Premium-only.