Last updated on May 20, 2024
Azure Storage Overview Cheat Sheet
- An Azure storage account contains blobs, files, queues, tables, and disks.
- Types of Storage Accounts: General-purpose (v2 and v1), BlockBlobStorage, FileStorage, and BlobStorage
- All storage accounts are encrypted using Storage Service Encryption (SSE) for data at rest
- Storage accounts endpoints:
- Blob storage: https://tutorialsdojo.blob.core.windows.net
- Table storage: https://tutorialsdojo.table.core.windows.net
- Queue storage: https://tutorialsdojo.queue.core.windows.net
- Azure Files: https://tutorialsdojo.file.core.windows.net
- Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2: https://tutorialsdojo.dfs.core.windows.net
- Access tiers are: Hot, Cool, Cold, and Archive
- Hot
- Highest storage costs, but lowest access costs
- Store data that is accessed frequently
- By default, new storage accounts are created in the hot tier
- Cool
- Lower storage costs, but higher access costs
- Store data that is infrequently accessed (at least 30 days)
- You can use a cool access tier for short-term backup.
- Cold
- Lower storage costs and higher access costs compared to the cool tier.
- Store data that is rarely accessed (at least 90 days).
- You can use a cold access tier for storing large data sets in a cost-effective manner.
- Hot
-
- Archive
- Lowest storage costs, but the highest retrieval costs
- Store data that is rarely accessed (at least 180 days)
- Data needs to be stored for a long time.
- Archive
- Storage redundancy includes: Locally redundant storage (LRS), Zone-redundant storage (ZRS), Geo-redundant storage (GRS), Geo-zone-redundant storage (GZRS)
- Locally redundant storage (LRS)
- A low-cost redundancy strategy
- Your data is copied synchronously three times within the primary region
- Zone-redundant storage (ZRS)
- Redundancy for high availability
- The data is copied synchronously across three Azure availability zones in the primary region
- Geo-redundant storage (GRS)
- Cross-regional redundancy
- In the primary region, data is synchronously copied three times, and then asynchronously copied to the secondary region.
- Enable read-only geo-redundant storage (RA-GRS) to access data in the secondary region.
- Geo-zone-redundant storage (GZRS)
- Redundancy for both high availability and maximum durability
- Data is copied synchronously across three Azure availability zones in the primary region, then copied asynchronously to the secondary region.
- You can also enable RA-GZRS for read access data in the secondary region
- Locally redundant storage (LRS)
- Moving of data into different storage account can be done automatically or manually
- You can migrate data manually using:
- AzCopy uses a command-line utility
- Data Movement Library is designed for high-performance, reliable, and easy data transfer operations similar to AzCopy
- REST API or client library lets you create a custom application to migrate your data
Types of Storage Accounts
- General-purpose v2 accounts
- Supports Data Lake Gen2, Blobs, Files Disks Queues Tables
- Delivers the lowest per-gigabyte capacity prices for Azure Storage
- General-purpose v1 accounts
-
- Supports Blobs, Files, Disks, Queues, Tables
- You can upgrade a general-purpose v1 account to a general-purpose v2 account with no downtime and without copying the data.
- You can use general-purpose v1 accounts since the General-purpose v2 accounts and Blob storage accounts only support the Azure Resource Manager deployment model.
- If you don’t need a large capacity for transaction-intensive or significant geo-replication bandwidth, GPv1 is a suitable choice
- BlockBlobStorage accounts
- Provides low, consistent latency, and higher transaction rates.
- Upgrading a Blob storage account to a general-purpose v2 account has no downtime and you don’t need to copy the data
- It doesn’t support hot, cool, cold, and archive access tiers
- You can use BlockBlobStorage for storing unstructured object data as block blobs or append blobs.
- FileStorage accounts
- Only supports file shares
- Offers IOPS bursting
- BlobStorage accounts
- Only supports block and append blobs.
- BlobStorage account offers standard performance. While the BlockBlobStorage account supports premium performance.
Storage Account Type |
Supported Services |
Supported Performance Tiers |
Supported Access Tiers |
Replication Options |
Deployment Model |
Encryption |
General- purpose V2 |
Blob, File, Queue, Table, Disk, and Data Lake Gen2 |
Standard, Premium |
Hot, Cool, Archive |
LRS, GRS, RA-GRS, ZRS, GZRS (preview), RA-GZRS (preview) |
Resource Manager |
Encrypted |
General- purpose V1 |
Blob, File, Queue, Table, and Disk |
Standard, Premium |
N/A |
LRS, GRS, RA-GRS |
Resource Manager, Classic |
Encrypted |
BlockBlob Storage |
Blob (block blobs and append blobs only) |
Premium |
N/A |
LRS, ZRS |
Resource Manager |
Encrypted |
FileStorage |
File only |
Premium |
N/A |
LRS, ZRS |
Resource Manager |
Encrypted |
BlobStorage |
Blob (block blobs and append blobs only) |
Standard |
Hot, Cool, Cold, Archive |
LRS, GRS, RA-GRS |
Resource Manager |
Encrypted |
Security
- To grant access in your storage account, the request must include a valid Authorization header
- If authentication of identity is successful, then Azure Active Directory returns a token to use in authorizing the request to Azure Storage Services.
- You can use shared key authorization to construct a connection string
- Shared access signature allows you to have granular control on who can access your data
- When you copy a file without the metadata for encryption, the blob content cannot be retrieved again.
Azure Storage Overview Pricing
- You are charged based on your Region, Account type, Access Tier, and Storage Capacity
- The replication and reads/write operations also incur costs.
- If your data isn’t running in the same region, you’re charged for data egress.
Locally Redundant Storage (LRS) vs Zone-Redundant Storage (ZRS):
https://tutorialsdojo.com/locally-redundant-storage-lrs-vs-zone-redundant-storage-zrs/
Validate Your Knowledge
Question 1
Question Type: Single choice
You have an existing Azure subscription that has the following Azure Storage accounts.
Name |
Kind |
Performance |
Replication |
Access Tier |
tdaccount1 |
General-purpose V2 |
Standard |
Locally-redundant storage (LRS) |
Cool |
tdaccount2 |
General-purpose V2 |
Premium |
Read-access geo-redundant storage (RA-GRS) |
Hot |
tdaccount3 |
General-purpose V1 |
Premium |
Geo-redundant storage (GRS) |
None |
tdaccount4 |
BlobStorage |
Standard |
Locally-redundant storage (LRS) |
Hot |
There is a requirement to identify the storage accounts that can be converted to zone-redundant storage (ZRS) replication. This must be done only through a live migration from Azure Support.
Which of the following accounts can you convert to ZRS?
- tdaccount1
- tdaccount2
- tdaccount3
- tdaccount4
For more Azure practice exam questions with detailed explanations, check out the Tutorials Dojo Portal:
Azure Storage Overview Cheat Sheet Resources:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/storage/common/storage-account-overview?toc=/azure/storage/blobs/toc.json
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/storage/common/storage-account-create?tabs=azure-portal
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