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Azure Blob Storage Overview

Azure Blob Storage is Microsoft's cloud object storage solution for modern data access patterns—accessing the latest data from anywhere, anytime.

Blob storage is optimized for storing massive amounts of unstructured data, such as:

  • Text or binary data
  • Images and videos
  • Application installation files
  • Log files
  • Data for backup, restore, disaster recovery, and archiving
  • Data for big data analytics
What is a blob? A blob is a sequence of bytes. Azure Blob Storage can store any type of text or binary data.

Key Concepts

Storage Accounts

A storage account provides a unique namespace in Azure for your data. Every object you store in Blob Storage is accessible via an HTTP or HTTPS address. The storage account namespace includes one of the following subdomains, depending on the account type:

  • <StorageAccountName>.blob.core.windows.net

Containers

A container is a logical grouping of a set of blobs. A storage account can contain an unlimited number of containers, and a container can hold an unlimited number of blobs.

The name of a container must conform to the following naming rules:

  • Container names must start with a letter or number.
  • Container names can only contain lowercase letters, numbers, and hyphens.
  • Container names must be between 3 and 63 characters long.
  • Container names must start and end with a letter or number.
  • Container names must be specified in a case-insensitive manner, but the service treats them as case-sensitive.

Blobs

Azure Blob Storage supports three types of blobs:

  • Block blobs: Optimized for storing large amounts of unstructured data, such as images, videos, and audio files.
  • Append blobs: Optimized for append operations, such as logging data from a virtual machine.
  • Page blobs: Optimized for random read and write operations. Used primarily for storing virtual machine disks.

Common Scenarios

Blob Storage is ideal for a wide variety of scenarios:

  • Serving images or documents directly to a browser: Any web application can retrieve blobs to display an image or render a document.
  • Storing files for distributed access: Any application running from anywhere in the world can access user files stored securely.
  • Streaming video and audio: Blob Storage can be used for media content delivery.
  • Writing to log files: Append blobs are ideal for scenarios where data is continuously appended.
  • Backing up data and restoring it: Blob Storage is a cost-effective solution for backup and disaster recovery.
  • Storing data for analysis: Azure Data Lake Storage uses Blob Storage as its foundation.

Pricing Tiers

Blob Storage offers different pricing tiers to optimize costs based on access frequency and performance needs:

  • Hot tier: Optimized for frequently accessed data.
  • Cool tier: Optimized for infrequently accessed data.
  • Archive tier: Optimized for rarely accessed data with flexible latency requirements.

For more details on pricing and tiers, see Azure Blob Storage Pricing.

Getting Started

You can interact with Azure Blob Storage using various tools:

  • Azure Portal: A web-based interface for managing your storage.
  • Azure CLI: A command-line tool for managing Azure resources.
  • Azure Storage Explorer: A cross-platform GUI tool for managing Azure Storage resources.
  • SDKs: Client libraries for various programming languages.
  • REST API: Direct HTTP/S access to Blob Storage services.

See the Azure Blob Storage quickstart to get started with creating a storage account and uploading your first blob.