Azure Storage Services
Learn about Azure Storage, a cloud storage solution that supports data objects, file shares, disks for virtual machines, and high-throughput NoSQL databases.
Overview of Azure Storage
Azure Storage offers a highly available, scalable, secure, and durable cloud storage solution for a wide range of data needs. It is designed to support various data types and workloads, from simple file storage to complex NoSQL data.
Core Storage Services
Azure Storage provides several core services:
- Blob Storage: Optimized for storing massive amounts of unstructured data, such as text or binary data. This includes images, documents, streaming media, application data, and backups.
- File Storage: Offers fully managed cloud file shares that are accessible via the industry-standard Server Message Block (SMB) protocol. You can mount File Storage shares simultaneously from cloud or on-premises Windows, Linux, and macOS deployments.
- Queue Storage: Used for storing large numbers of messages that can be accessed from anywhere in the world via HTTP or HTTPS. A single queue message can be up to 64 KB in size, and a storage account can contain an unlimited number of queues.
- Table Storage: A NoSQL key-attribute store that accepts authenticated calls using HTTP or HTTPS, from any known Azure region. Table storage is ideal for storing large amounts of structured, non-relational data.
- Disk Storage: Provides highly performant and resilient managed disks for Azure virtual machines.
Key Concepts
Storage Account
A storage account is a container that holds all your Azure Storage data objects. The storage account provides a unique namespace for your Azure Storage data. All objects in Azure Storage are part of a storage account.
Data Redundancy
Azure Storage offers various data redundancy options to ensure durability and availability:
- Locally Redundant Storage (LRS)
- Zone-Redundant Storage (ZRS)
- Geo-Redundant Storage (GRS)
- Read-Access Geo-Redundant Storage (RA-GRS)
Getting Started with Blob Storage
Blob storage is ideal for many common scenarios: serving images or documents directly to a browser, storing files for distributed access, streaming video and audio, writing to log files, and storing data for backup and restore, disaster recovery, and archiving.
Creating a Blob Container
A container is analogous to a folder in a file system. You can create a container using the Azure portal, Azure CLI, or SDKs.
az storage container create --name mycontainer --account-name mystorageaccount --auth-mode login
Uploading a Blob
Once a container is created, you can upload blobs to it.
az storage blob upload --container-name mycontainer --file /path/to/local/file.txt --name remote/file.txt --account-name mystorageaccount --auth-mode login
Security Best Practices
Securing your Azure Storage data is paramount. Key considerations include:
- Access Control: Utilize Shared Access Signatures (SAS), Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) integration, and access policies to grant granular permissions.
- Encryption: Data is encrypted at rest by default. You can also use customer-managed keys for enhanced control.
- Network Security: Configure firewalls and virtual network service endpoints to restrict access.