Azure Storage Account

Overview

Azure Storage Accounts provide a scalable and secure storage solution for a variety of data types, including blobs, files, queues, and tables. They offer high availability, durability, and redundancy, making it an ideal choice for storing and accessing data in the cloud. Azure Storage Accounts also support multiple storage tiers to optimize costs and performance based on data access patterns.

Core Functionality

• Blob Storage: Store unstructured data such as images, videos, and backups. Supports hot, cool, and archive tiers for cost optimization.
• File Storage: Provides fully managed file shares in the cloud that can be accessed via the SMB protocol. Ideal for lifting and shifting existing applications.
• Queue Storage: Enables messaging between application components, helping to decouple and scale microservices-based architectures.
• Table Storage: Offers a NoSQL key-value store for structured data, providing high availability and scalability.
• Storage Tiers:
  • Hot Tier: Optimized for data that is accessed frequently. Provides low latency and high throughput, making it suitable for scenarios where data is actively in use.
  • Cool Tier: Designed for data that is infrequently accessed and stored for at least 30 days. Offers lower storage costs compared to the hot tier, but with slightly higher access costs.
  • Archive Tier: Ideal for data that is rarely accessed and stored for long periods (at least 180 days). Provides the lowest storage costs but has higher access latency, as data must be rehydrated before access.
  • Premium Tier: Optimized for high-performance workloads that require low latency and high throughput. Data is stored on solid-state drives (SSDs) for consistent performance.
  • Transaction Optimized Tier: Designed for workloads that require high transaction rates and low latency. Ideal for applications with a large number of input/output operations per second (IOPS).
• Redundancy Options:
  • Locally Redundant Storage (LRS): Replicates data three times within a single physical location in the primary region. Provides at least 11 nines (99.999999999%) durability.
  • Zone-Redundant Storage (ZRS): Replicates data synchronously across three availability zones within a single region. Ensures high availability and durability even in the event of a zone failure.
  • Geo-Redundant Storage (GRS): Replicates data to a secondary region hundreds of miles away from the primary region. Provides high durability (at least 16 nines, 99.9999999999999%) by ensuring that data is available even in the event of a regional outage.
  • Read-Access Geo-Redundant Storage (RA-GRS): Offers all the benefits of GRS, with the additional advantage of read access to the data in the secondary region. Ensures high availability and enables read access to data even during an outage in the primary region.

References

• Azure Storage Account Overview
• Introduction to Azure Blob Storage
• Introduction to Azure File Storage
• Introduction to Azure Queue Storage
• Introduction to Azure Table Storage
• Premium Block Blob Storage Accounts
• Understand Azure Files Performance
• Azure Storage Redundancy Options