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When diving into the world of Microsoft Azure storage solutions, it is critical to understand the options available for storage accounts and the types of storage within those accounts. Azure provides flexible and secure ways to store and manage your data, catering to a variety of needs and scale requirements.
GPv2 accounts are the most common storage account type, providing access to all Azure Storage services, including Blobs, Files, Queues, Tables, and Disks. They offer a blend of performance and cost-effectiveness for most storage scenarios.
GPv1 accounts serve as the legacy option and also support all Azure Storage services. However, they may not have some of the latest features and pricing models of GPv2 accounts. GPv1 accounts could be more cost-effective for certain workloads that do not require the latest capabilities.
BlockBlob storage accounts are specialized for storing block blobs and append blobs. This type of account offers premium performance for high-transaction rate scenarios with larger objects, such as big data analysis and media streaming.
FileStorage accounts cater specifically to enterprises that require premium performance file shares, making them ideal for I/O-intensive workloads that also need the features of Azure Files, including SMB/CIFS protocols.
BlobStorage accounts are a legacy option and are dedicated to unstructured object storage. They provide access to block blobs and append blobs, but are being replaced by GPv2 and BlockBlob accounts.
When it comes to the types of storage Azure provides, there are several you need to be aware of:
Blob (Binary Large OBject) storage is designed for handling unstructured data such as documents, images, videos, and log files. There are three types of blobs:
Blob Type | Use Cases | Maximum Size |
---|---|---|
Block blob | Streaming, high performance | 190.7 TiB |
Append blob | Logging, append operations | 195 GiB per blob |
Page blob | Azure virtual hard disks (VHD) | 8 TiB per blob |
Azure Files offers fully managed file shares in the cloud, accessible via the SMB protocol. This storage is useful for lift-and-shift scenarios where existing on-premises applications that rely on standard file system capabilities are moved to Azure.
Feature | Description |
---|---|
SMB and NFS Protocols | Compatibility with Windows, Linux, and macOS |
Mountable Shares | Accessible from Azure VMs or on-premises |
Snapshots and Backup Integration | For data protection and recovery |
Azure Disk Storage provides block-level storage volumes for Azure VMs. There are three performance tiers:
Disk Type | Use Case | Latency | Throughput & IOPS |
---|---|---|---|
Ultra Disk | IO-intensive workloads | Sub-millisecond | Up to 160,000 IOPS and 2,000 MB/s |
Premium SSD | Production workloads | Low | Up to 20,000 IOPS and 900 MB/s |
Standard SSD | Web servers, light apps | Moderate | Up to 6,000 IOPS and 750 MB/s |
Standard HDD | Backup, non-critical | High | Up to 500 IOPS and 60 MB/s |
Queue Storage facilitates communication between application components, often between web front ends and worker processes, through messaging queues.
Table Storage offers a NoSQL key-attribute data store, ideal for flexible datasets like user data, device information, or metadata.
Azure’s varied storage account options and storage types are designed to meet a wide range of needs and are ingrained with security and durability. When preparing for the AZ-900 Microsoft Azure Fundamentals exam, it’s crucial to understand not only these fundamentals but also how to apply them to real-world scenarios to select the right type or combination of storage solutions for any given workload.
Azure storage accounts offer a unique namespace for your data, which can be accessed from anywhere in the world via HTTP or HTTPS.
Answer: A, B
Both General-purpose v1 and General-purpose v2 support storing virtual machine disk files.
Azure Blob Storage is for storing unstructured data as blobs, whereas Azure Disk Storage is a separate service designed for virtual machine disk storage.
Answer: C
Blob Storage is specially optimized for storing massive amounts of unstructured data.
Azure Files provides fully managed file shares that are accessible through the SMB protocol.
Hot, Cool, and Archive are not types of storage accounts, but they represent tiers for storing data within the Azure Blob Storage service based on the frequency of access.
Answer: B
Geo-redundant storage (GRS) replicates your data to a secondary region for protection against regional outages.
Azure Queue Storage is a service for storing large numbers of messages that can be accessed from anywhere in the world via authenticated calls using HTTP or HTTPS.
Answer: D
Azure Disk Storage is built to provide high throughput and low latency, which is ideal for scenarios like databases that require persistent storage with these characteristics.
Before you can start using Azure Storage services such as Azure Blobs, Files, Queues, or Tables, you need to create a storage account, which provides a unique namespace for your data.
Answer: A
Read-access geo-redundant storage (RA-GRS) offers read-only access to your data in the secondary region if the primary region becomes unavailable, maximizing availability.
Answer: C
Azure Cosmos DB is a NoSQL database service that supports various data models, including key-value, column family, document, and graph databases.
A storage account in Azure is a unique namespace in the cloud to store and access data objects like blobs, files, queues, tables, and disks.
The three types of storage accounts in Azure are General-purpose v2, General-purpose v1, and Blob storage.
General-purpose v2 storage accounts support all types of data objects while General-purpose v1 accounts only support blobs and tables.
Blob storage is used to store and access unstructured object data, such as text and binary data.
The maximum size of a block blob in Azure Blob storage is 200 GB.
The hot access tier is for frequently accessed data, while the cold access tier is for data that is infrequently accessed and stored for long-term retention.
The minimum size of a file share in Azure Files is 100 GB.
A storage account key in Azure is used to authenticate and authorize access to a storage account.
The Azure Blob storage lifecycle management feature is used to automatically move blobs between the hot and cold access tiers based on custom-defined policies.
Locally-redundant storage stores three copies of data within a single datacenter, while geo-redundant storage stores six copies of data across two or more datacenters in different regions for additional data resilience.
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