Storage

• Secure, durable, scalable, and easily accessible from across the globe.
• E.g. persistent data across devices for mobile applications.
• Uses REST API endpoints that make data available to huge range of application types & platforms e.g. .NET, JAVA, NODE.

Benefits

• Automated backup and recovery: mitigates the risk of losing data if there is any unforeseen failure or interruption.
• Replication across the globe
  • Copies your data to protect it against any planned or unplanned events
    • e.g. scheduled maintenance or hardware failures.
  • Allows you to replicate your data at multiple locations across the globe.
• Support for data analytics: supports performing analytics on your data consumption.
• Encryption capabilities: You have tight control over who can access the data.
• Multiple data types: Almost any e.g. videos, text, like binary files. Many options for SQL and NoSQL data.
• Data storage in virtual disks: Up to 32 TB. Significant when you’re storing heavy data such as videos and simulations.
• Storage tiers: To prioritize access to data based on frequently used vs rarely used information.

Types of data

Structured data

• Also called relational data
• Data that adheres to a schema.
  • Defines table, fields, clear relationship between two
• Can be stored in e.g. database table with rows and columns.
• Relies on keys to indicate how one row in a table relates to data in another row of another table.
• 💡 It’s easy to enter, query, and analyze.
  • All of the data follows the same format.
  • E.g. sensor data or financial data.

Semi-structured data

• Also called as non-relational or NoSQL data.
• Doesn’t fit neatly into tables, rows, and columns.
• Instead uses tags or keys that organize and provide a hierarchy for the data.

Unstructured data

• Encompasses data that has no designated structure to it
• There are no restrictions on the kinds of data it can hold.
  • e.g. PDF document, a JPG image, a JSON file, video content, etc
• 💡More prominent as businesses try to tap into new data sources.

Azure Storage

• Includes disks attached to virtual machines, file shares, databases
• They can expand & shrink necessarily
• Common characteristics:
  • Durable and highly available with redundancy and replication.
  • Secure through automatic encryption and role-based access control.
  • Scalable with virtually unlimited storage.
  • Managed, handling maintenance and any critical problems for you.
  • Accessible from anywhere in the world over HTTP or HTTPS.

Azure Blob Storage

• Also known as Azure blobs
• Good for very large objects, such as video files or bitmaps
• Unstructured, meaning that there are no restrictions on the kinds of data it can hold.
• Can manage thousands of simultaneous uploads, massive amounts of video data, constantly growing log files, and can be reached from anywhere with an internet connection.
• Lets you
  • Stream large video or audio files directly to the user’s browser from anywhere in the world.
  • Send large volumes of data directly to the browser.
• 💡 Also used to store data for backup, disaster recovery, and archiving.
• 📝 Ability to store up to 8 TB of data for virtual machines (VM disks)

Storage tiers

1. Hot storage tier: optimized for storing data that is accessed frequently.
2. Cool storage tier: optimized for data that are infrequently accessed and stored for at least 30 days.
3. Archive storage tier: for data that are rarely accessed and stored for at least 180 days with flexible latency requirements.

Azure Disk Storage

• Also known as Azure disks
• Provides disks for virtual machines, applications, and other services to access and use as they need.
• In the background they are page-blobs in a blob storage
• Allows data to be persistently stored and accessed from an attached virtual hard disk.
• Disks can be managed or unmanaged by Azure, and therefore managed and configured by the user.
• 💡 Use-case examples: Lift and shift
  • Storing data that is not required to be accessed from outside the virtual machine to which the disk is attached.
• Different sizes and performance levels
  • Solid-state drives (SSDs)
  • Hard disk drives (HDDs)
• 💡 Use standard SSD and HDD disks for less critical workloads
  • Premium SSD disks for mission-critical production applications.
• Durable: ZERO% annualized failure rate.

Azure Data Lake Storage

• 📝 Allows you to perform analytics on your data usage and prepare reports.
• Stores both structured and unstructured data.
• Combines the scalability and cost benefits of object storage with the reliability and performance of the Big Data file system capabilities.
• Supports batch queries, interactive queries, real-time analytics, machine learning, and being a data warehouse.

Azure File Storage

• Also known as Azure files
• File shares that you can access and manage like a file server
• Fully managed file shares in the cloud that are accessible via the industry standard Server Message Block (SMB) protocol.
• Ensures the data is encrypted at rest and in transit.
• Can be mounted concurrently by cloud or on-premises Windows, Linux, and macOS.
• 📝 Any number of Azure virtual machines or roles can mount and access the file storage share simultaneously.
• 💡 Good to share files anywhere in the world, diagnostic data, or application data sharing.

Azure Queue Storage

• A data store for queuing and reliably delivering messages between applications
• 💡 Helps build flexible applications and separate functions for better durability across large workloads
  • When application components are decoupled, they can scale independently
  • Provides asynchronous message queueing for communication between application components
• Typically, there are one or more sender components and one or more receiver components.
  • Sender components add messages to the queue
  • Receiver components retrieve messages from the front of the queue for processing
• 💡 Use-case examples:
  • Create a backlog of work and to pass messages between different Azure web servers.
  • Distribute load among different web servers/infrastructure and to manage bursts of traffic.
  • Build resilience against component failure when multiple users access your data at the same time.

Azure Table Storage

• NoSQL data Store
• Scheme-less design

Encryption Types

Azure Storage Service Encryption (SSE)

• For data at rest helps you secure your data.
• It encrypts the data before storing it and decrypts the data before returning it.
• Encryption & decryption are transparent to the user.

Client-side encryption

• Data is already encrypted by the client libraries.
• Azure stores the data in the encrypted state at rest, which is then decrypted during retrieval.

Replication

• Set up when you create a storage account
• Ensures that your data is durable and always available
• Provides regional and geographic replications
  • Protects data against natural disasters and other local disasters like fire or flooding.

On-premises storage vs Azure data storage

Why migrate to cloud

• Cost effectiveness
  • Pay-as-you go
  • No dedicated hardware to be purchased, installed, configured and maintained. = no up-front expense (or capital cost).
  • Scalable: No need to have idle hardware
• Reliability
  • Managed data backup, load balancing, disaster recovery, and data replication as services to ensure data safety and high availability.
• Storage types
  • On-premises => often requires numerous servers and administrative tools for each storage type.
  • Azure has different storage options for each part of your solution.
• Agility
  • Requirements and technologies change: No need to reprovisioning & deployment of new infrastructure.
  • Create new services in minutes = change storage back-ends quickly without needing a significant hardware investment.

Comparison