Azure Storage Overview

 

• An Azure storage account contains blobs, files, queues, tables, and disks.
• Types of Storage Accounts: General-purpose (v2 and v1), BlockBlobStorage, FileStorage, and BlobStorage
• All storage accounts are encrypted using Storage Service Encryption (SSE) for data at rest
• Storage accounts endpoints:
  • Blob storage: https://tutorialsdojo.blob.core.windows.net
  • Table storage: https://tutorialsdojo.table.core.windows.net
  • Queue storage: https://tutorialsdojo.queue.core.windows.net
  • Azure Files: https://tutorialsdojo.file.core.windows.net
  • Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2: https://tutorialsdojo.dfs.core.windows.net

• Access tiers are: Hot, Cool, and Archive
  • Hot
    • Highest storage costs, but lowest access costs
    • Store data that is accessed frequently
    • By default, new storage accounts are created in the hot tier
  • Cool
    • Lower storage costs, but higher access costs
    • Store data that is infrequently accessed (at least 30 days)
    • You can use a cool access tier for short-term backup.

• • Archive
    • Lowest storage costs, but the highest retrieval costs
    • Store data that is rarely accessed (at least 180 days)
    • Data needs to be stored for a long time.
• Storage redundancy includes: Locally redundant storage (LRS), Zone-redundant storage (ZRS), Geo-redundant storage (GRS), Geo-zone-redundant storage (GZRS)
  • Locally redundant storage (LRS) 
    • A low-cost redundancy strategy
    • Your data is copied synchronously three times within the primary region
  • Zone-redundant storage (ZRS)
    • Redundancy for high availability
    • The data is copied synchronously across three Azure availability zones in the primary region
  • Geo-redundant storage (GRS)
    • Cross-regional redundancy
    • In the primary region, data is synchronously copied three times, and then asynchronously copied to the secondary region.
    • Enable read-only geo-redundant storage (RA-GRS) to access data in the secondary region.
  • Geo-zone-redundant storage (GZRS)
    • Redundancy for both high availability and maximum durability
    • Data is copied synchronously across three Azure availability zones in the primary region, then copied asynchronously to the secondary region.
    • You can also enable RA-GZRS for read access data in the secondary region
• Moving of data into different storage account can be done automatically or manually
• You can migrate data manually using:
  • AzCopy uses a command-line utility
  • Data Movement Library is designed for high-performance, reliable, and easy data transfer operations similar to AzCopy
  • REST API or client library lets you create a custom application to migrate your data

Types of Storage Accounts

• General-purpose v2 accounts
  • Supports Data Lake Gen2, Blobs, Files Disks Queues Tables
  • Delivers the lowest per-gigabyte capacity prices for Azure Storage

• General-purpose v1 accounts

• • Supports Blobs, Files, Disks, Queues, Tables
  • You can upgrade a general-purpose v1 account to a general-purpose v2 account with no downtime and without copying the data.
  • You can use general-purpose v1 accounts since the General-purpose v2 accounts and Blob storage accounts only support the Azure Resource Manager deployment model.
  • If you don’t need a large capacity for transaction-intensive or significant geo-replication bandwidth, GPv1 is a suitable choice

• BlockBlobStorage accounts
  • Provides low, consistent latency, and higher transaction rates.
  • Upgrading a Blob storage account to a general-purpose v2 account has no downtime and you don’t need to copy the data
  • It doesn’t support hot, cool, and archive access tiers
  • You can use BlockBlobStorage for storing unstructured object data as block blobs or append blobs. 

• FileStorage accounts
  • Only supports file shares
  • Offers IOPS bursting

• BlobStorage accounts
  • Only supports block and append blobs.
  • BlobStorage account offers standard performance. While the BlockBlobStorage account supports premium performance.

Storage Account Type	Supported Services	Supported Performance Tiers	Supported Access Tiers	Replication Options	Deployment Model	Encryption
General- purpose V2	Blob, File, Queue, Table, Disk, and Data Lake Gen2	Standard, Premium	Hot, Cool, Archive	LRS, GRS, RA-GRS, ZRS, GZRS (preview), RA-GZRS (preview)	Resource Manager	Encrypted
General- purpose V1	Blob, File, Queue, Table, and Disk	Standard, Premium	N/A	LRS, GRS, RA-GRS	Resource Manager, Classic	Encrypted
BlockBlob Storage	Blob (block blobs and append blobs only)	Premium	N/A	LRS, ZRS	Resource Manager	Encrypted
FileStorage	File only	Premium	N/A	LRS, ZRS	Resource Manager	Encrypted
BlobStorage	Blob (block blobs and append blobs only)	Standard	Hot, Cool, Archive	LRS, GRS, RA-GRS	Resource Manager	Encrypted

 

Security

• To grant access in your storage account, the request must include a valid Authorization header
• If authentication of identity is successful, then Azure Active Directory returns a token to use in authorizing the request to Azure Storage Services.
• You can use shared key authorization to construct a connection string
• Shared access signature allows you to have granular control on who can access your data
• When you copy a file without the metadata for encryption, the blob content cannot be retrieved again.

Pricing

• You are charged based on your Region, Account type, Access Tier, and Storage Capacity
• The replication and reads/write operations also incur costs.
• If your data isn’t running in the same region, you’re charged for data egress.