Azure Blob Storage Documentation

Azure Blob Storage is Microsoft's cloud object storage solution for a reason. It's engineered to store massive amounts of unstructured data, such as text or binary data. Blob storage is optimized for storing files for direct access or direct download. Unstructured data is data that doesn't adhere to a particular data model or definition, such as text or binary files.

Key Concepts

Blobs

A blob is any collection of binary data, such as a file. Blob storage is designed to store:

• Images or documents for direct serving to a browser.
• Files for backup or restore, disaster recovery, and data archiving.
• Data for analysis that can be mounted and processed on-premises or in Azure.
• Files for uploading and downloading from a remote application.
• Streaming for audio and video.
• Data for writing to logs.
• Storage for data processed by an on-premises or Azure-hosted service.

Storage Tiers

Azure Blob Storage offers three tiers for data, each optimized for different access patterns:

• Hot tier: Optimized for frequently accessed data. This tier has the highest storage costs and lowest access costs.
• Cool tier: Optimized for infrequently accessed data. This tier has lower storage costs and higher access costs than the hot tier. Data stored in the cool tier for at least 30 days may be moved to the archive tier for even lower costs.
• Archive tier: Optimized for rarely accessed data. This tier has the lowest storage costs but the highest access costs. Data stored in the archive tier must be rehydrated before it can be read or downloaded, which can take hours.

Getting Started

Create a Storage Account

To use Blob Storage, you first need to create an Azure Storage account. You can do this through the Azure portal, Azure CLI, or Azure PowerShell.

Using Azure CLI:

az storage account create \
    --name mystorageaccountname \
    --resource-group myresourcegroup \
    --location eastus \
    --sku Standard_LRS \
    --kind StorageV2

Upload a Blob

Once you have a storage account, you can upload blobs. You can use tools like Azure Storage Explorer, Azure CLI, or programmatically via SDKs.

Using Azure CLI to upload a blob:

az storage blob upload \
    --account-name mystorageaccountname \
    --container-name mycontainer \
    --name myblob \
    --file path/to/your/local/file.txt

Common Scenarios

• Web-scale content delivery: Store images, videos, and other static assets for websites and applications.
• Backup and disaster recovery: Securely store backups of databases and critical files.
• Data archiving: Move infrequently accessed data to lower-cost tiers to reduce storage expenses.
• Big data analytics: Store large datasets for processing by big data services like Azure Databricks or Azure Synapse Analytics.

Further Reading

• Introduction to Azure Blob Storage
• Blob storage access tiers
• Create a container