Understanding Storage Services in Azure

Introducing the Azure Storage Services

Azure storage provides the following four services: Blob storage, Table storage, Queue storage, and File storage.

• Blob Storage stores unstructured object data. A blob can be any type of text or binary data, such as a document, media file, or application installer. Blob storage is also referred to as Object storage.
• Table Storage stores structured datasets. Table storage is a NoSQL key-attribute data store, which allows for rapid development and fast access to large quantities of data.
• Queue Storage provides reliable messaging for workflow processing and for communication between components of cloud services.
• File Storage offers shared storage for legacy applications using the standard SMB protocol. Azure virtual machines and cloud services can share file data across application components via mounted shares, and on-premises applications can access file data in a share via the File service REST API.

An Azure storage account is a secure account that gives you access to services in Azure Storage. Your storage account provides the unique namespace for your storage resources. The image below shows the relationships between the Azure storage resources in a storage account:

There are two types of storage accounts:

General-purpose Storage Accounts

A general-purpose storage account gives you access to Azure Storage services such as Tables, Queues, Files, Blobs and Azure virtual machine disks under a single account. This type of storage account has two performance tiers:

• A standard storage performance tier which allows you to store Tables, Queues, Files, Blobs and Azure virtual machine disks.
• A premium storage performance tier which currently only supports Azure virtual machine disks. See Premium Storage: High-Performance Storage for Azure Virtual Machine Workloads for an in-depth overview of Premium storage.

Blob Storage Accounts

A Blob storage account is a specialized storage account for storing your unstructured data as blobs (objects) in Azure Storage. Blob storage accounts are similar to your existing general-purpose storage accounts and share all the great durability, availability, scalability, and performance features that you use today including 100% API consistency for block blobs and append blobs. For applications requiring only block or append blob storage, we recommend using Blob storage accounts.

Note:

Blob storage accounts support only block and append blobs, and not page blobs.

Blob storage accounts expose the Access Tier attribute which can be specified during account creation and modified later as needed. There are two types of access tiers that can be specified based on your data access pattern:

• A Hot access tier which indicates that the objects in the storage account will be more frequently accessed. This allows you to store data at a lower access cost.
• A Cool access tier which indicates that the objects in the storage account will be less frequently accessed. This allows you to store data at a lower data storage cost.

If there is a change in the usage pattern of your data, you can also switch between these access tiers at any time. Changing the access tier may result in additional charges. Please seePricing and billing for Blob storage accounts for more details.

For more details on Blob storage accounts, see Azure Blob Storage: Cool and Hot tiers.

Before you can create a storage account, you must have an Azure subscription, which is a plan that gives you access to a variety of Azure services. You can get started with Azure with a free account. Once you decide to purchase a subscription plan, you can choose from a variety ofpurchase options. If you’re an MSDN subscriber, you get free monthly credits that you can use with Azure services, including Azure Storage. See Azure Storage Pricing for information on volume pricing.

To learn how to create a storage account, see Create a storage account for more details. You can create up to 100 uniquely named storage accounts with a single subscription. See Azure Storage Scalability and Performance Targets for details about storage account limits.

Storage Service Versions

The Azure Storage services are regularly updated with support for new features. The Azure Storage services REST API reference describes each supported version and its features. We recommend that you use the latest version whenever possible. For information on the latest version of the Azure Storage services, as well as information on previous versions, seeVersioning for the Azure Storage Services.

Blob Storage

For users with large amounts of unstructured object data to store in the cloud, Blob storage offers a cost-effective and scalable solution. You can use Blob storage to store content such as:

• Documents
• Social data such as photos, videos, music, and blogs
• Backups of files, computers, databases, and devices
• Images and text for web applications
• Configuration data for cloud applications
• Big data, such as logs and other large datasets

Every blob is organized into a container. Containers also provide a useful way to assign security policies to groups of objects. A storage account can contain any number of containers, and a container can contain any number of blobs, up to the 500 TB capacity limit of the storage account.

Blob storage offers three types of blobs, block blobs, append blobs, and page blobs (disks).

• Block blobs are optimized for streaming and storing cloud objects, and are a good choice for storing documents, media files, backups etc.
• Append blobs are similar to block blobs, but are optimized for append operations. An append blob can be updated only by adding a new block to the end. Append blobs are a good choice for scenarios such as logging, where new data needs to be written only to the end of the blob.
• Page blobs are optimized for representing IaaS disks and supporting random writes, and may be up to 1 TB in size. An Azure virtual machine network attached IaaS disk is a VHD stored as a page blob.

For very large datasets where network constraints make uploading or downloading data to Blob storage over the wire unrealistic, you can ship a hard drive to Microsoft to import or export data directly from the data center. See Use the Microsoft Azure Import/Export Service to Transfer Data to Blob Storage.

Table storage

Modern applications often demand data stores with greater scalability and flexibility than previous generations of software required. Table storage offers highly available, massively scalable storage, so that your application can automatically scale to meet user demand. Table storage is Microsoft’s NoSQL key/attribute store – it has a schemaless design, making it different from traditional relational databases. With a schemaless data store, it's easy to adapt your data as the needs of your application evolve. Table storage is easy to use, so developers can create applications quickly. Access to data is fast and cost-effective for all kinds of applications. Table storage is typically significantly lower in cost than traditional SQL for similar volumes of data.

Table storage is a key-attribute store, meaning that every value in a table is stored with a typed property name. The property name can be used for filtering and specifying selection criteria. A collection of properties and their values comprise an entity. Since Table storage is schemaless, two entities in the same table can contain different collections of properties, and those properties can be of different types.

You can use Table storage to store flexible datasets, such as user data for web applications, address books, device information, and any other type of metadata that your service requires. You can store any number of entities in a table, and a storage account may contain any number of tables, up to the capacity limit of the storage account.

Like Blobs and Queues, developers can manage and access Table storage using standard REST protocols, however Table storage also supports a subset of the OData protocol, simplifying advanced querying capabilities and enabling both JSON and AtomPub (XML based) formats.

For today's Internet-based applications, NoSQL databases like Table storage offer a popular alternative to traditional relational databases.

Queue Storage

In designing applications for scale, application components are often decoupled, so that they can scale independently. Queue storage provides a reliable messaging solution for asynchronous communication between application components, whether they are running in the cloud, on the desktop, on an on-premises server, or on a mobile device. Queue storage also supports managing asynchronous tasks and building process workflows.

A storage account can contain any number of queues. A queue can contain any number of messages, up to the capacity limit of the storage account. Individual messages may be up to 64 KB in size.

File Storage

Azure File storage offers cloud-based SMB file shares, so that you can migrate legacy applications that rely on file shares to Azure quickly and without costly rewrites. With Azure File storage, applications running in Azure virtual machines or cloud services can mount a file share in the cloud, just as a desktop application mounts a typical SMB share. Any number of application components can then mount and access the File storage share simultaneously.

Since a File storage share is a standard SMB file share, applications running in Azure can access data in the share via file sytem I/O APIs. Developers can therefore leverage their existing code and skills to migrate existing applications. IT Pros can use PowerShell cmdlets to create, mount, and manage File storage shares as part of the administration of Azure applications.

Like the other Azure storage services, File storage exposes a REST API for accessing data in a share. On-premise applications can call the File storage REST API to access data in a file share. This way, an enterprise can choose to migrate some legacy applications to Azure and continue running others from within their own organization. Note that mounting a file share is only possible for applications running in Azure; an on-premises application may only access the file share via the REST API.

Distributed applications can also use File storage to store and share useful application data and development and testing tools. For example, an application may store configuration files and diagnostic data such as logs, metrics, and crash dumps in a File storage share so that they are available to multiple virtual machines or roles. Developers and administrators can store utilities that they need to build or manage an application in a File storage share that is available to all components, rather than installing them on every virtual machine or role instance.