Windows Azure allows developers to store tables, blobs, and message queues. The storage
can be accessed through HTTP
Locally redundant storage: Copy of the data is created in the same region where
storage account is created. There are 3 copies of each request made against the
data that resides on separate domains.
Zone-redundant storage (available for blobs only): Copy of the data is created
on separate facilities either in the same region or across two regions. The
advantage is that even if there is failure on one facility, the data still can be
retained. Three copies of data are created. One more advantage is that data can
be read from a secondary location.
Geo-redundant storage: `Copy is created in a different region which means data
is retained even if there is a failure in the complete region. The numbers of copies
of data created are 6 in this case.
Read-access geo-redundant storage: This option allows reading of data from a
secondary location when data on the primary location is not available. The number
of copies created is 6. The main advantage here is that availability of data can be
maximized.
Storage Account Endpoints
There will a unique URL for each object. For example, here account name is ‘tutorialspoint’
then the default URL for blob is https://tutorialspoint.blob.core.windows.net. Similarly,
replace blob with table, queue and file in the URL to get the respective URLs. To access an
object in the location is appended in the URL. For example,
http://tutorialspoint.blob.core.windows.net/container1/blob1.
Generating an Access Key
Access key is used to authenticate the access to the storage account. Two access keys are
provided in order to access the account without interrupting it, in case, one key has to be
regenerated.
To get the Access Keys, click on ‘Manage Access Keys’ in your storage account. The
following screen will come up
Managing Data to Azure Storage
How can you upload or download data to Azure store? There are many ways to do it, but
it can’t be done within the Azure portal itself. You will have to either create your own
application or use an already built tool.
The word ‘Blob’ expands to Binary Large OBject
Blobs include images, text files, videos and audios. There are three types of blobs in the
service offered by Windows Azure namely block, append and page blobs.
Block blobs are collection of individual blocks with unique block ID. The block
blobs allow the users to upload large amount of data.
Append blobs are optimized blocks that helps in making the operations efficient.
Page blobs are compilation of pages. They allow random read and write
operations. While creating a blob, if the type is not specified they are set to block
type by default.
All the blobs must be inside a container in your storage. Here is how to create a container in Azure storage.
Create a Container
Step 1: Go to Azure portal and then in your storage account.
Step 2: Create a container by clicking ‘Create new container’ as shown in following image
There are three options in the Access dropdown which sets the permission of who can
access the blobs. ‘Private’ option will let only the account owner to access it. ‘Public
Container’ will allow anonymous access to all the contents of that container. ‘Public blob’
option will set open access to blob but won’t allow access to the container