Agenda

Overview of Azure Storage

Storage Types
Blob Types
Blob Containers
Replication Types
Storage Access Keys
Storage Endpoints
Storage Monitoring
 Overview of Azure Storage

Azure Storage is a service that you can use to store both unstructured and partially structured data. Developers and
cloud architects commonly choose it to host data that App Service or PaaS cloud services use, or they use it to
facilitate data exchange between components of Azure-based solutions.
 Storage Types
Blobs. These typically represent unstructured files such as media content, virtual machine disks,
backups, or logs. Blobs facilitate locking mechanism, ensuring exclusive file access that IaaS virtual
machines require. There are three types of blobs. The first one, known as a block blob, is optimized for
sequential access, which is ideal for media content. The second one, referred to as a page blob, offers
superior random access capabilities, which is best suited for virtual machine disks. The third one,
referred to as an append blob, applies to data append operations, without the need to modify existing
content. This works best with logging and auditing activities.
Tables. These host no relational and partially structured content, which consists of multiple rows of
data with different sets of properties. In the context of Azure Table storage, these rows are referred to
as entities. Developers frequently implement table storage as the backend data store for App Service
or PaaS cloud services.
Queues. These are temporary storage for messages that Azure services commonly use to
asynchronously communicate with each other. In particular, in distributed applications, a source
component sends a message by placing it in a queue. The destination component works though the
messages in the queue one at a time.
Files. Similar to blobs, these provide storage for unstructured files, but they offer support for file
sharing in the same manner as traditional on-premises Windows file shares
 Replication Types
Locally redundant. Your data replicates synchronously across three copies within a single facility in a single region.
Locally redundant storage (LRS) protects your data against server hardware failures but not against a failure of the
facility itself. This is the only option available for Premium Storage accounts.
o Zone-redundant. Your data replicates synchronously across three copies that reside in two or three facilities in a
single region. Zone-redundant storage (ZRS) offers more resiliency than LRS; however, it does not protect against
failures that affect an entire region. More importantly, ZRS can contain only block blobs, which makes it unsuitable for
hosting IaaS virtual machine disk files,
tables, queues, or file shares.
o Geo-redundant. Your data replicates asynchronously from the primary region to a secondary region. Predefined
pairing between the two regions ensures that data stays within the same geographical area. Data also replicates
synchronously across three replicas in each of the regions, resulting in six copies of storage account content. If failure
occurs in the primary region, Azure Storage automatically fails over to the secondary region. Effectively, geo-
redundant storage (GRS) offers superior resiliency over LRS and ZRS. o Read-access geo-redundant. As with GRS, your
data replicates asynchronously across two regions and synchronously within each region, yielding six copies of a
storage account. However, with read-access geographically redundant storage, the storage account in the secondary
region is available for read-only access regardless of the primarys status. This allows you to perform near real-time
data analysis and reporting tasks without affecting your production workload performance.
 Blob Types
Block blobs. Block blobs are optimized for uploads and downloads. To accomplish this optimization,
Azure divides data into smaller blocks of up to 4 megabytes (MB) in size, which subsequently upload
or download in parallel. Individual block blobs can be up to 200 GB in size.

Page blobs. Page blobs are optimized for random read and write operations. Blobs are accessed as
pages, each of which is up to 512 bytes in size. When you create a page blob, you specify the
maximum size to which it might grow, up to the limit of 1 TB. Each standard storage account page
blob offers throughput of up to 60 MB per second or 500 (8 KB in size) I/O operations per second
(IOPS).

Append blobs. Append blobs are strictly for append operations because they do not support
modifications to their existing content. Appending takes place in up to 4 MB blocksthe same size as
the individual blocks of block blobswith up to 50,000 blocks per append blob, which translates
roughly into 195 GB.
 Blob containers

Private. This is the default option. The

container does not allow anonymous access.
This lesson later reviews the available authentication methods.

Public Blob. This option allows anonymous access to each blob within the container; however, it
prevents browsing the content of the container. In other words, it is necessary to know the full path to
the target blob to access it.

Public Container. This option allows anonymous access to each blob within the container, with the
ability to browse the containers content.
 Storage Endpoints,Access keys
https://account_name.blob.core.windows.net/
https://account_name.table.core.windows.net/
https://account_name.queue.core.windows.net/
https://account_name.file.core.windows.net/

Primary Key
Connection Strings
 Storage Endpoints,Access keys
Rule name

Source ip

Source Port

Destination

Destination Port

Direction

Action

Protocol

Priority