Azure Storage Account Overview
Discover the foundational cloud storage solution for modern applications.
What is an Azure Storage Account?
An Azure storage account provides a unique namespace in Azure for your data object. All objects and partitions within your storage account are addressable via HTTP or HTTPS from anywhere in the world. The storage account also contains your different data services:
- Blob storage: For storing large amounts of unstructured data such as text or binary data.
- File storage: For managed file shares in the cloud accessible via the SMB protocol.
- Queue storage: For storing large numbers of messages that can be accessed from anywhere in the world.
- Table storage: For storing large amounts of structured NoSQL data.
Key Features and Benefits
Azure Storage offers a highly available, secure, and scalable cloud storage solution. Here are some of its key benefits:
- Scalability: Designed to scale massively to meet the demands of any application.
- Durability & Availability: Offers various redundancy options to ensure your data is always accessible and protected.
- Security: Provides robust security features including encryption at rest and in transit, access control, and threat detection.
- Cost-Effectiveness: Tiered storage options allow you to optimize costs based on access frequency.
- Versatility: Supports a wide range of data types and access patterns for diverse application needs.
Common Use Cases
Azure Storage accounts are used in countless scenarios, including:
- Serving images or documents directly to a browser.
- Storing data for backup and restore, disaster recovery, and archiving.
- Writing to log files.
- Storing data that can be accessed from an on-premises application or a hosted cloud service.
- Streaming video and audio.
- Storing data for a virtual machine.
- Processing big data workloads.
Getting Started
To start using Azure Storage, you'll need an Azure subscription. You can then create a storage account through the Azure portal, Azure CLI, or programmatically.
Create a Storage Account Learn More with Quickstart