Getting Started with Cloud Storage Manager

3 min read

Cloud Storage Manager is a free Windows tool from Smikar Software for inspecting and optimising Azure Blob and File storage across your subscriptions. This page is the orientation: what the tool does, who it's for, system requirements, and the order to read the rest of the documentation.

What the tool does

Azure surfaces storage totals through the portal but stops short of telling you which storage accounts, containers, blobs, or tiers are driving your bill. Cloud Storage Manager fills that gap by scanning every storage account across your Azure tenancy with read-only access and presenting:

World map view - Azure locations where your storage accounts reside, with growth and size context.
Explorer-style tree - drill from subscription to storage account to container to blob.
Search across the tenancy - find a specific account, container, or blob across every subscription in seconds.
Top 10 storage accounts and top 100 blobs - fast cleanup-target identification.
Storage growth graphs - how each account's usage has changed over time.
Blob tiering analysis - see which blobs are sitting in Hot tier when they could be Cool or Archive (and what the cost implication is).
Last access time reporting - find blobs nobody has touched in months.
Right-click actions - change tiering, delete blobs, copy details, jump to the Azure portal in context.

Who it's for

Azure admins wanting visibility into where storage cost is actually accumulating.
FinOps teams building a storage cost-reduction plan and needing the data behind it.
IT leads sizing up an estate before committing to enterprise agreements.
Migration planners scoping content moves or consolidations.

If you have admin access to one or more Azure subscriptions and you suspect your storage bill is higher than it should be, this is the tool.

Cost

Cloud Storage Manager is free. No subscription, no per-seat licence, no usage limits. Request a download from the product page and the installer arrives by email.

What you need

A Windows machine with admin rights.
An Azure account with Reader role (at minimum) on the subscriptions you want to scan. Higher-privilege accounts also work, but Reader is enough.
Internet access for the scans (the tool uses Azure management APIs).