Hi Readers !
The below is the first part of my blogs on covering the basic concepts about Azure Storage account . The second part would have steps to add storage accounts with explanations for the options to choose, and to access it with a client software named Azure Storage explorer.
What are Azure Storage accounts?
It is just the name Microsoft has given for its solution for data storage in Azure. We can create one or many storage accounts in our Azure subscriptions as per our needs. The "needs" could be the sensitivity of the data or a requirement from your client that their data in the cloud shouldn't be of multi Tenant model. Each subscription can have upto 200 Storage accounts with each having storage size upto 550 TB .
Microsoft supports authentication to azure storage accounts through Access keys, Shared Access Signature keys(SAS) and with Azure AD. (I will cover in the demos later ).
We can also set different replication settings to a storage accounts that will define how the replicas of your actual data are going to be kept.
Durability Options of Storage replication:
Locally Redundant Storage (LRS): Data being synchronously replicated three times within the same azure data center. It covers only storage node failures and this is the cheapest replication because of low level redundancy.
Zone Redundant Storage (ZRS) : Here the data kept in the azure storage is being synchronously replicated among the availability zones within an azure region .Azure availability Zones are basically different physical locations within an azure Region like "East US". MS maintains 3 zones in a region to the minimum.
Geo Redundant Storage (GRS): The data in your storage account is replicated synchronously with LRS first and then asynchronously replicated to another region and be made locally redundant within that Region too. The benefit is obvious. If the whole region goes down, you could access your data kept in your secondary region.
Read Access GRS or RA-GRS: GRS with the option of having to use the secondary copy in read only mode. The regular GRS give access to your data in the secondary region, only when your primary region goes down. The azure storage used for automated DB backup runs with RA-GRS replication.
Geo Zone Redundant Storage: This is a new durability/Replication option that replaces LRS with ZRS in the Geo Redundant Storage. Explaining further, it replicates data synchronously first to the availability Zones and then asynchronously replicate it to a different region . It is only in public preview and is currently not being made available to all Azure regions.
Services offered under Azure Storage accounts
1.Azure Blobs
This is the service which can be used to store unstructured data (data that is not confined to a particular data type/defenition). We can create blob containers and sub folders under a storage account to keep various types of data like SQL backups, images, Videos, excel sheets or basically any format of data. Under Azure Blobs , we can create three types of blobs to keep our data .
a.Page blobs: It consists of pages of 512 bytes and are suitable for faster read/write access.
b.Append Blobs: Data can be appended or added to the end of previously added data without replacing it.
c.Block Blobs :It consists of blocks and are suitable for data streaming.
2.Azure Files
Think of it as network file share locations that can be accessed via URLs from anywhere . This come of use in place of wherever we use SMB (Server Message blocks) share in On-premise (Like Replication snapshot folder).
3.Azure Queues Storage:
Azure queue storage are used for the purpose of asynchronous message queueing for communication between application components.
4. Azure Table Storage:
This is the storage service for NoSQL fans. You could store your structured NoSQL data in the cloud with Azure Table storage.
You could see all these options when you open the overview page in your storage account.There are a few more definitions related to azure storage and unrelated to Azure storage account and hence I would cover it when I talk about other subjects like VMs and Azure SQL storage (Behind the scene).
Thanks for Visiting. Please follow me in blogger for more content related to SQL servers and Azure. Hope the explanations are simple enough to be followed just like how I intended.
The below is the first part of my blogs on covering the basic concepts about Azure Storage account . The second part would have steps to add storage accounts with explanations for the options to choose, and to access it with a client software named Azure Storage explorer.
What are Azure Storage accounts?
It is just the name Microsoft has given for its solution for data storage in Azure. We can create one or many storage accounts in our Azure subscriptions as per our needs. The "needs" could be the sensitivity of the data or a requirement from your client that their data in the cloud shouldn't be of multi Tenant model. Each subscription can have upto 200 Storage accounts with each having storage size upto 550 TB .
Microsoft supports authentication to azure storage accounts through Access keys, Shared Access Signature keys(SAS) and with Azure AD. (I will cover in the demos later ).
We can also set different replication settings to a storage accounts that will define how the replicas of your actual data are going to be kept.
Durability Options of Storage replication:
Locally Redundant Storage (LRS): Data being synchronously replicated three times within the same azure data center. It covers only storage node failures and this is the cheapest replication because of low level redundancy.
Zone Redundant Storage (ZRS) : Here the data kept in the azure storage is being synchronously replicated among the availability zones within an azure region .Azure availability Zones are basically different physical locations within an azure Region like "East US". MS maintains 3 zones in a region to the minimum.
Geo Redundant Storage (GRS): The data in your storage account is replicated synchronously with LRS first and then asynchronously replicated to another region and be made locally redundant within that Region too. The benefit is obvious. If the whole region goes down, you could access your data kept in your secondary region.
Read Access GRS or RA-GRS: GRS with the option of having to use the secondary copy in read only mode. The regular GRS give access to your data in the secondary region, only when your primary region goes down. The azure storage used for automated DB backup runs with RA-GRS replication.
Geo Zone Redundant Storage: This is a new durability/Replication option that replaces LRS with ZRS in the Geo Redundant Storage. Explaining further, it replicates data synchronously first to the availability Zones and then asynchronously replicate it to a different region . It is only in public preview and is currently not being made available to all Azure regions.
Services offered under Azure Storage accounts
1.Azure Blobs
This is the service which can be used to store unstructured data (data that is not confined to a particular data type/defenition). We can create blob containers and sub folders under a storage account to keep various types of data like SQL backups, images, Videos, excel sheets or basically any format of data. Under Azure Blobs , we can create three types of blobs to keep our data .
a.Page blobs: It consists of pages of 512 bytes and are suitable for faster read/write access.
b.Append Blobs: Data can be appended or added to the end of previously added data without replacing it.
c.Block Blobs :It consists of blocks and are suitable for data streaming.
2.Azure Files
Think of it as network file share locations that can be accessed via URLs from anywhere . This come of use in place of wherever we use SMB (Server Message blocks) share in On-premise (Like Replication snapshot folder).
3.Azure Queues Storage:
Azure queue storage are used for the purpose of asynchronous message queueing for communication between application components.
4. Azure Table Storage:
This is the storage service for NoSQL fans. You could store your structured NoSQL data in the cloud with Azure Table storage.
You could see all these options when you open the overview page in your storage account.There are a few more definitions related to azure storage and unrelated to Azure storage account and hence I would cover it when I talk about other subjects like VMs and Azure SQL storage (Behind the scene).
Thanks for Visiting. Please follow me in blogger for more content related to SQL servers and Azure. Hope the explanations are simple enough to be followed just like how I intended.
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