Generally available: Access time-based life cycle management rules for Data Lake Storage Gen2

Azure Storage now supports access time tracking for objects in Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2\. You can also use the last access time of objects to define life cycle management rules for moving blobs to cooler access tiers when they haven’t been accessed for a specified duration. In addition, enabling auto-tiering with your life cycle rule will automatically move the object back into a hotter access tier upon access. This update extends the access time tracking and associated life cycle management support added earlier for Azure Blob storage to Data Lake Storage. Some data in Azure Storage is written once and read many times. To effectively manage the life cycle of such data and optimise your storage costs, it is important to know the last time of access for the data. When access time tracking is enabled for a storage account, the last access time property on the file is updated when it has been read. You can then define life cycle management policies based on last access time: * Transition objects from hotter to cooler access tiers if the file has not been accessed for a specified duration. * Automatically transition objects from cooler to hotter access tiers when a file is accessed again. * Delete objects if they have not been accessed for an extended duration. Access time tracking is only available for files in Data Lake Storage Gen2\. It is not available for directories. Access time tracking is free to enable. Updates to access time are charged as “other operations”. It is free to set up life cycle management policies for your storage accounts. You are charged the regular operation costs for the _[Set blob tier](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/rest/api/storageservices/set-blob-tier)_ API calls invoked due to the policy. Delete operations are free. For more information about pricing, see [Azure Data Lake Storage pricing](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/storage/data-lake/). [Learn more.](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/storage/blobs/lifecycle-management-overview) * Azure Data Lake Storage * Storage Accounts * Features * Management * [ Storage Accounts](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/services/storage/)