Azure Core Services - Azure Storage

 

Azure Storage Accounts

Types of storage accounts

• General-purpose v2 accounts – This is recommended for most scenarios. This storage account type provides the blob, file , queue and table service.

• General-purpose v1 accounts – This also provides the blob, file , queue and table service, but is the older version of this account type.

• BlockBlobStorage accounts – This is specifically when you want premium performance for storing block or append blobs.

• FileStorage accounts – This is specifically when you want premium performance for file-only storage.

• BlobStorage accounts – This is a legacy storage account. Use General-purpose v2 account as much as possible.

The most common type of storage account is the General Purpose v2 storage account.

Use case scenarios for the different services in a General Purpose v2 storage account

Blob service

• This is object storage for the cloud.

• Here you can store massive amounts of unstructured data on the cloud.

• This is highly recommended when you want to store images, documents, video and audio files.

• Within the blob service, you create a container that is used to store the blob objects.

There are three different types of blobs

Block blobs – This is used for storing text and binary data.

Append blobs – This is ideal for logging data.

Page blobs – This is used to store virtual hard disk files for Azure virtual machines.

To use the Blob service you have to first create a container and then upload the blobs or objects into the container.

When you upload an object or blob to the service, each bob gets a unique URL which you can access if you are assigned the right permissions

File service - Use this service if you need to store files that need to be accessed by machines using the SMB (Server Message Block) protocol

In the File service, you can first go ahead and create a file share.

You can then mount this file share from different machines. You can't mount drives with the Blob service.

Table service - Use this if you want to store NoSQL data or table like data.

It's easy and simple to create a table and add data from the Azure portal itself.

Queue service - Use this if you want to exchange messages between components of your application

Azure Storage Accounts - Replication

There are different replication techniques available to make your data highly available.

The different replication techniques available

1. Locally-redundant storage (LRS) - Here data is replicated synchronously three times within a physical location in the primary region.

2. Zone-redundant storage (ZRS) - Here data is replicated synchronously across three Azure availability zones in the primary region. This is good when you want to have data present even in the event of a data center failure.

3. Geo-redundant storage (GRS) - Here data is replicated synchronously three times in the primary region, then replicated asynchronously to the secondary region.

4. Read access Geo-redundant storage (RA-GRS) - Here data is replicated synchronously three times in the primary region, then replicated asynchronously to the secondary region. Here the data in the secondary region is also available for read-only purposes.

Azure Storage Accounts - Access tiers

Access tiers help you optimize the storage costs and access costs for your data. The different access tiers are

1. Hot – This is optimized for storing data that is accessed frequently. This can be set at the account level.

2. Cool – This is optimized for storing data that is infrequently accessed and stored for at least 30 days. This can be set at the account level.

Note:- For the Cool Access tier , the storage costs are lower than the Hot tier. But the access costs are higher than the Hot access tier.

3. Archive tier - This is optimized for storing data that is rarely accessed and stored for at least 180 days. This can be set only at the blob level.

Note:- When a blob is in the archive tier, you can’t access the blob. You have to rehydrate the blob first before it can be accessed.

Also the storage costs are the least when it comes to the Archive access tier. But the access costs are the highest.

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Azure SQL Database (Platform as a service)

This is a service that allows you to create a managed Microsoft SQL Server database on the cloud. The advantages of using this service

1. You don't have to manage the underlying infrastructure. This is managed by Azure.

2. You have a variety of purchasing options

3. You have automated backups. This reduces the burden of managing backups.

4. It gives you a service level agreement of 99.99%

If you need to have more control over the database engine, then consider installing the SQL Server engine on an Azure virtual machine.

Azure Synapse Analytics

This was formerly known as Azure SQL Data warehouse.

This service is used for enterprise data warehousing and Big Data Analytics

When you want to perform analysis on a large data set , consider using this service.

Below is a snapshot from the Microsoft documentation on where this tool fits in the picture of Big Data

Azure Cosmos DB

This is a data store that companies can opt for , when they want to get low latency access to their data and they want high availability for their data.

It is a multi-model database. This means you can choose from a variety of options when it comes to what type of data you want to store in the account.