Azure storage services

Services

1. Azure Blobs: Store unstructured data (text or binary data)
2. Azure Files: Fully managed file shares in the cloud
3. Azure Queues: Store large numbers of messages that can be accessed from anywhere in the world
4. Azure Tables: Store structured NoSQL data
5. Azure Disks: Managed block storage for VMs

Benefits

1. Durable and highly available: Data is replicated to ensure durability and high availability
2. Secure: Data is encrypted
3. Scalable: Scale up or down as needed
4. Manages: Azure handles the maintance of the infrastructure and also in case of failure.
5. Accesible: Accessible from anywhere in the world with HTTP and HTTPS. MS also provides libraries for these services in different programming languages (.NET, Java, Python, etc.)

Services explained

Azure Blobs

Storage for unstrucuted data, like images, videos, backups etc. the blob can be accessed via a REST API, Azure CLI, Azure PowerShell or Azure Storage client libraries.

Tiers

• Hot access tier: For frequently used files (images for a website)

  • Can be set at account level
  • Can be set at blob level, during or after upload.

• Cool access tier: For files, which are not that much used and stored for at least 30 days (customer invoices)

  • Can be set at account level
  • Can be set at blob level, during or after upload.
  • Can tolerate lower availability. Lower availability SLA and higher access costs compared to hot data are acceptable for the lower storage price

• Cold access tier: For files, which are rarely accessed and stored for at least 90 days

  • Cannot be set at account level
  • Can be set at blob level, during or after upload.
  • Can tolerate lower availability. Lower availability SLA and higher access costs compared to hot data are acceptable for the lower storage price

• Archive access tier: For files, which are rarely accessed and stored for at least 180 days, with flexible latency requirements. (Long-term backups)

  • Cannot be set at account level
  • Can be set at blob level, during or after upload.
  • Stores data offline and lowest storage costs. Also the highest costs to rehydrate and access data.

  Azure Files

  Manages file shares accessable with SMB (Standard Message Block) or NFS (Network File System) protocol. SMB is accesible by Windows, Linux and MacOS. NFS only for Linux and MacOS

  Benefits

  1. Shared access: Works seemlesly with nearly all OS's. On-prem to cloud migration is easy.
  2. Fully managed: Azure handles the maintance of the infrastructure and also in case of failure.
  3. Scripting and tooling: PowerSheel cmdlets and Azure CLI can be used for the administration of the Azure applications.
  4. Resilincy: High availability is pre programmed. All problems I got with On-prem storages (power outage) are not my problem anymore

5. Familiar programmability: Application can access the file share with simple file system I/O APIs. So the existing code can be reused.

Azure Queues

Stores messages which can be accessed from anywhere. The messages can be up to 64 KB. The messages are stored in a queue and can be accessed by a worker role.

Azure Disks

Block-level storage volumes, which are virtualized and therefore offer more availability and resiliency (capability to recover quickly from difficulties).

Azure Tables

A NoSQL datastore, which can store large amounts of strucuted data. Supoprts hybrid and multi-cloud solutions, as the data is always visible with authenticated calls.