Azure Documentation

Introduction to Azure Storage

Azure Storage is a cloud storage solution that supports data for quick and easy access. It's designed to be highly available, secure, and scalable. Azure Storage offers a range of services to meet diverse data storage needs, from unstructured data like text and binary to structured data and massive datasets.

This documentation provides an overview of the core Azure Storage services, their use cases, and how to get started with them. Whether you're building a new application or migrating existing data, Azure Storage provides the robust foundation you need.

Key Benefits: Highly available, secure, scalable, cost-effective, and managed by Microsoft.

Azure Blob Storage

Azure Blob Storage is Microsoft's object storage solution for the cloud. It's optimized for storing massive amounts of unstructured data, such as text or binary data. You can use Blob Storage to serve images or documents directly to a browser, store files for distributed access, stream video and audio, write to backup and restore log files, store data for analysis, and more.

Blob Storage Tiers:

Example: Uploading a file to Blob Storage (Conceptual)

Using the Azure CLI:

az storage blob upload --account-name  --container-name  --name  --file  --auth-mode login

Azure Files

Azure Files provides fully managed cloud file shares that are accessible via the industry-standard Server Message Block (SMB) protocol. You can "mount" an Azure Files share on-premises or in the cloud, just as you would mount a Windows file share. This makes it ideal for scenarios like replacing or supplementing on-premises file servers, managing application settings, or sharing configuration files.

Azure Queue Storage

Azure Queue Storage is a service that stores large numbers of messages that can be processed asynchronously. Each message in a queue is typically 64 KB in size, and a storage account can contain thousands of messages. Queue Storage is commonly used to decouple components of cloud applications and manage communication between them.

Azure Table Storage

Azure Table Storage is a NoSQL key-attribute store that accepts authenticated calls through HTTP or HTTPS. Table Storage is ideal for storing large amounts of structured, non-relational data. It's a flexible and scalable solution for various data storage needs.

Tip: For structured data requiring complex queries and relationships, consider Azure SQL Database or Azure Cosmos DB.

Azure Managed Disks

Azure Managed Disks are the recommended way to manage storage for Azure virtual machines. Managed Disks are block-level storage volumes that are managed by Azure and are used for VMs. The types of managed disks include Ultra Disk, Premium SSD, Standard SSD, and Standard HDD, each offering different performance and cost characteristics.

Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2

Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 is a set of capabilities dedicated to big data analytics, built on Azure Blob Storage. It's optimized for high-performance analytics workloads, offering a hierarchical namespace that enables efficient data access patterns. This service is crucial for data scientists and big data engineers working with large datasets.

Managing Azure Storage

Azure provides several tools for managing your storage resources:

Security is paramount. Azure Storage supports various security features, including Azure Active Directory integration, shared access signatures (SAS), and encryption at rest and in transit.