To clarify ingress and egress costs in Azure, particularly in the context of Azure Data Lake Storage (ADLS) and Azure Data Factory (ADF), it's essential to understand how Azure charges for data movement and storage. Here's a breakdown:
Ingress (Data In)
- Definition: Ingress refers to data that is entering or being uploaded into Azure services from an external source.
- Cost: Free. Azure does not charge for data ingress. Whether you're uploading data to Azure Data Lake Storage or any other Azure service, you don't pay for the incoming data transfer.
Egress (Data Out)
- Definition: Egress refers to data leaving Azure services, typically to another service, location, or back to an on-premises environment.
- Cost: Charged. Azure charges for data egress, with costs varying depending on the destination and volume of data.
Factors Affecting Egress Costs:
- Volume of Data: The amount of data being transferred out of Azure. Larger data volumes incur higher costs.
- Destination:
- Within the Same Region: Generally, there’s no charge for data movement within the same Azure region.
- Cross-Region or External Transfers: If data is transferred out of an Azure region or to an external location (e.g., an on-premises environment), egress charges apply. Cross-region transfers can be particularly expensive.
- Service Type:
- ADLS: Charges are based on the data egress to other regions or external sources.
- ADF: If you're using Azure Data Factory to move data from ADLS to another Azure service or an external location, ADF incurs charges for both data movement and egress (if applicable).
- Type of Storage:
- Hot/Cold/Archive Tiers: The storage tier in ADLS can impact costs. Hot storage is more expensive but has lower access costs, whereas cold and archive tiers are cheaper to store but more expensive to access and egress.
Calculating Costs:
- Azure Pricing Calculator: Azure provides a Pricing Calculator where you can estimate ingress and egress costs based on your usage patterns.
- Bandwidth Pricing: Review the Bandwidth Pricing page for detailed egress rates, depending on the regions involved and data volume.
Practical Example:
- Scenario: You're moving 100 GB of data from ADLS in East US to an on-premises data center in Europe.
- Costs:
- Ingress: If you're uploading 100 GB of data to ADLS, this is free.
- Egress: Transferring 100 GB from East US to Europe will incur egress charges based on Azure's pricing for data transfer out of the East US region to an external location.
Key Takeaways:
- Ingress is free, egress is charged.
- Egress charges depend on the volume of data and the destination (same region, cross-region, external).
- Use the Azure Pricing Calculator and Bandwidth Pricing page to estimate costs based on your specific scenario.
If you have specific parameters for your use case (e.g., the amount of data, regions involved), you can plug those into the Azure Pricing Calculator to get a more accurate estimate.