Introduction to Azure Blob Storage

Azure Blob Storage is a cloud storage solution from Microsoft Azure that stores unstructured data, such as text or binary data. Blobs can be used to serve images or documents directly to a browser, stored in parallel for fast parallel access, or streamed to an on-premises or remote device.

What is Blob Storage?

Blob storage is optimized for storing massive amounts of unstructured data. Unstructured data is data that doesn't adhere to a particular data model or definition, such as text or binary data.

Blob storage is ideal for:

Serving images or documents directly to a browser.
Storing files for distributed access.
Streaming video and audio files.
Writing to log files.
Storing data for backup, restore, disaster recovery, and archival.
Storing data for analysis with an on-premises or Azure-hosted service.

Key Concepts

Blob storage is part of Azure Storage. All objects in Azure Storage contain the following:

A storage account: All access to Azure Storage objects is through a storage account. A storage account provides a unique namespace in Azure for your data.
A container: A container is a grouping of a set of blobs. Think of it like a folder in a file system.
A blob: A blob represents the individual file or data object. Azure Blob Storage supports three types of blobs:
- Block blobs: Optimized for large amounts of text or binary data.
- Append blobs: Optimized for append operations, such as logging.
- Page blobs: Optimized for random read/write operations and used for IaaS virtual machine disks.

How Blob Storage Works

You interact with Blob Storage through REST APIs, client libraries, or Azure portal. Data is organized in a hierarchical structure:

                
                    StorageAccountName
                    └── ContainerName
                        ├── BlobName1.jpg
                        ├── BlobName2.txt
                        └── SubFolder
                            └── AnotherBlob.pdf
                
            

Common Use Cases

Web-based content delivery: Serve images, style sheets, JavaScript files, and other static content.
Data backup and archival: Store backups and archive data cost-effectively.
Log file storage: Collect and store logs from applications and services.
Big data analytics: Store large datasets for analysis using services like Azure Databricks or Azure Synapse Analytics.
Virtual machine disks: Store the VHDs for Azure virtual machines.

Blob storage is a highly scalable and durable solution for storing unstructured data in the cloud.

Getting Started

To start using Azure Blob Storage, you'll need to:

Create an Azure Storage account.
Create a container within your storage account.
Upload blobs to your container.

You can use the Azure Storage Explorer tool for a graphical interface, or use Azure SDKs and the Azure CLI for programmatic access.

Explore the following sections to learn more about specific features like access tiers, security, and performance optimization.