Azure Fundamentals (AZ-900)

Last Updated: 12/31/2022

Azure Storage

  • Azure Storage is Microsoft's cloud storage solution for modern data storage scenarios.
  • Core storage services offer
    • a massively scalable object store for data objects,
    • a NoSQL store.
    • a messaging store for reliable messaging, and
    • disk storage for Azure virtual machines,
    • a file system service for the cloud,
  • Regardless of your business scenario, Azure has a solution to help you manage your storage needs.

Services

Azure Blob Storage

  • Is an object storage solution that you can use to store massive amounts of unstructured data, such as text or binary data.
  • Blob Storage is ideal for serving images or documents directly to a browser, storing data for archives or distributed access, streaming video and audio, and disaster recovery scenarios.

Azure Table Storage

  • Offers a NoSQL data store for key value pairs using large scale datasets.
  • You can use Azure Table Storage to store petabytes of semi-structured data, and keep your costs down.

Azure Queue Storage

  • Provides asynchronous message queuing for communication between application components, whether they're running in the cloud, on the desktop, on premises, or on mobile devices.

Azure File Storage

  • Offers fully managed file shares in the cloud, and shares are accessible using industry standard network protocols.
  • Mounting Azure file shares is just like connecting to shares on your local network.

Azure Disk Storage

  • Provides disks for virtual machines and applications to access and use as they need similar to how they would access disks that were on premises.
  • Azure offers both solid state drives for higher performance workloads and conventional hard drives for your less critical business scenarios.

Storage Tiers

  • There are three Azure storage tiers that you can use to balance your costs: hot, cool, and archive.
  • The hot storage tier is optimized for storing data that is accessed frequently, such as images for your website.
  • The cold storage tier is optimized for data that is infrequently accessed, and stored for at least 30 days, such as customer invoices.
  • And the archive storage tier is appropriate for data that is rarely accessed, and stored for at least 180 days, such as long-term backups.

Azure Storage Accounts

  • A storage account provides a unique namespace for your Azure Storage data that's accessible from anywhere in the world over HTTP or HTTPS.
  • Data in this account is secure, highly available, durable, and massively scalable.
  • When you create your storage account, you specify storage account type. The type of account determines the storage services and redundancy options.

List of redundancy options

  • Locally redundant storage (LRS)
  • Geo-redundant storage (GRS)
  • Read-access geo-redundant storage (RA-GRS)
  • Zone-redundant storage (ZRS)
  • Geo-zone-redundant storage (GZRS)
  • Read-access geo-zone-redundant storage (RA-GZRS)

Storage Account Types

Standard General Purpose v2

  • Blob Storage (including Data Lake Storage), Queue Storage, Table Storage, and Azure Files
  • LRS, GRS, RA-GRS, ZRS, GZRS, RA-GZRS
  • Standard storage account type for blobs, file shares, queues, and tables.
  • Recommended for most scenarios

Premium Block Blobs

  • Blob Storage (including Data Lake Storage)
  • LRS, ZRS
  • Premium storage account type for block blobs and append blobs.
  • Recommended for scenarios with high transaction rates or that use smaller objects or require consistently low storage latency.

Premium file shares

  • Azure Files
  • LRS, ZRS
  • Premium storage account type for file shares only.
  • Recommended for enterprise or high-performance scale applications.
  • Storage account supports both Server Message Block (SMB) and NFS file shares.

Premium page blobs

  • Page blobs only
  • LRS
  • Premium storage account type for page blobs only.

Storage Account Endpoints

  • Every storage account in Azure must have a unique-in-Azure account name. The combination of the account name and the Azure Storage service endpoint forms the endpoints for your storage account.
  • Storage account names must be between 3 and 24 characters in length and may contain numbers and lowercase letters only.
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