Understanding Azure Blob Storage: Key Features

What is Azure Blob Storage?

Large volumes of unstructured data can be managed and stored in the cloud with Microsoft Azure's Azure Blob Storage object storage solution. You can quickly archive and access text and binary data, including documents, movies, and photographs, using Azure Blob Storage. You can also benefit from characteristics like cost-effectiveness, security, and scalability. Blob storage is accessible over HTTP or HTTPS from any location. 

The cost of this service will depend on the type of storage account you have, the storage tiers you choose, and the level of redundancy your data requires. 

It offers three access tiers:

Azure Blob Storage Tier	Storage Cost	Access/Transaction Cost	Good for short-term backup
Hot	High	Low	Yes
Cool	Low	High	No Fee for early data deletion
Archive	Lowest	Highest	No Fee for early data deletion

In addition, it offers multiple levels of protection to safeguard your information, including role-based access control, shared access signatures, and encryption both in transit and at rest.

Blob Storage Usages

The following are some of the main applications for blob storage:

• Media: Data such as images,  audio and videos require a lot of storage space and may not always be accessed regularly.
• Logs: Software generates a stream of events during operation that can be captured in logs for later review. This data can grow in volume very quickly. Blob storage can quickly and affordably store it in an unstructured format. However, blob storage is less economical for this use scenario. There are fees associated with any log data query.
• Data Lakes: Blob storage is frequently utilized as the Gen1 and Gen2 layers for Azure Data Lake Storage, serving as the framework for data lake designs. 
• Disaster Recovery and Backups: Most businesses must maintain comprehensive backups, especially in case of ransomware attacks. Blob storage is an excellent option for backing up giant data sets because this data is rarely accessed and is duplicated in production.
• Big Data and Analytics: Workloads related to big data and analytics are landed in Blob Storage. It enables you to store raw data before processing it using programs like Azure HDInsight, Databricks, or other analytics platforms.
• Data Migration: Organizations use Blob Storage to help move data from on-site systems to the cloud. It acts as a stand-in repository for data that needs to be processed and consumed by Azure services.
• Content Distribution: Static content, such as pictures, videos, and downloadable files, is stored and distributed using blob storage. Azure Content Delivery Network (CDN) allows content to be distributed to users worldwide.

Blob Storage Features

The features of blob storage are:

Adaptability and Expandability

Cloud-based data systems have virtually limitless capacity, which can expand or contract in response to business requirements. This capacity shift eliminates the administrative burden of buying and setting up hardware. Blob storage allows large volumes of unstructured data to be easily stored and managed in the cloud.

Cost-Efficiency

One of the biggest benefits of cloud-based data solutions for small and mid-sized businesses is the potential for cost optimization, both with regard to hardware purchases and the administrative expenses related to hiring IT personnel to oversee such services. With pay-as-you-go pricing from Blob Storage, you may only pay for the storage you use and avoid any up-front costs or termination fees.

Implementation & Advanced Features 

Ensure that your data storage and security adhere to government rules and industry standards can be very costly and time-consuming. Cloud architects deliver services and solutions that already meet regulatory criteria. Blob storage makes advanced data management capabilities, including event-driven workflows, object versioning, deletion policies, and lifecycle management, possible.

Quick Deployment

Most cloud-based data solutions can be prepared in a few minutes, if not less. This is a desirable alternative that reduces labor expenses and time compared to typical hardware and software deployments, which can take days or even weeks to finish.

Components of Azure Blob Storage

Because so many other Azure services store and process data inside storage accounts and blob storage, Azure blob storage is essential to the Microsoft Azure platform. Also, each blob needs to be kept in its container.

Storage Account

Azure Blob Storage is a cloud-based object storage solution. Expanding blob storage can store massive amounts of unstructured data. A storage account connects an Azure Storage service group. Only Azure Storage data services are susceptible to changes within a storage account. The user can manage data services by integrating them into a storage account. Any changes made to the account after it has been created or stated during account creation are applicable everywhere. All stored data will be lost if the storage account is deleted.

Container

Blobs are arranged in containers, similar to file system directories, to organize a group of blobs. The container functions more like a folder that holds various blobs. You can create security policies at the container level and apply them to the container; all blobs housed under the same container will inherit these policies.

Blob

Binary large objects (BLOBs) can store varying amounts of data. Binary strings, often known as byte strings, are applied to BLOB values. The binary character set and collation are present, and the numerical values of the bytes in the column values serve as the basis for comparison and sorting. Character strings, or nonbinary strings, are how TEXT values are interpreted.

Blob Containers

Consider a blob container as a file management drawer. You could store audio files in one container and video data in another. An infinite number of containers and blobs can be kept in a single storage account. One type of cloud computing is containers; they are self-contained, meaning they have all the dependencies they require. 500 TB is the maximum amount of data that a container can store.

Since the name of your container creates the unique resource identifier (URI) that identifies the container and its blobs, it needs to be a legitimate DNS name. When naming a container, Microsoft offers the following guidelines to go by:

• Container names have to contain three to sixty-three characters. 
• The names have to begin with a number or letter. The only characters in the container name will be lowercase letters, digits, and the dash (-).
• Two or more dashes in a row are not permitted.

Methods of Accessing Data in Blob Storage

The Azure Portal is the most straightforward method to access Blob Storage if you are new to both Blob Storage and Azure. Follow the following steps:

• Azure Storage REST APIs: Your application or service can use Azure Storage REST APIs to access Blob Storage data programmatically.
• Azure PowerShell and CLI: These tools allow you to control storage standard procedures and retrieve data from Blob Storage.
• Azure SDKs: Azure SDKs for .NET, Java, Python, and other programming languages allow you to access Blob Storage data and connect it with your application or service.
• Azure Data Factory: Data can be transported and transformed between Blob Storage and other data sources, such as SQL Server or Hadoop, using Azure Data Factory.
• Third-party tools: You can use third-party cloud computing apps like CloudBerry Explorer, Cyberduck, or Storage Made Easy to see and manage Blob Storage data from your desktop or mobile device.

Blob Types

Three different kinds of blobs are available through the Azure blob storage service: block, append, and page blobs. When you construct the blob, you specify its type. Once a blob is generated, its type cannot be altered; the only ways to update it are by utilizing operations specific to that type of blob, such as writing pages to a page blob, appending blocks to an append blob, or writing a block or list of blocks to a block blob.

Block Blob

Block blobs are designed to upload massive volumes of data quickly and effectively. The building blocks of block blobs are blocks, which are uniquely identified by their block IDs. Up to 50,000 blocks can be found in a block blob, and its blocks can vary in size up to the largest size allowed by the current service version. 

Append Blob

Blocks make up an append blob designed with append operations in mind. Blocks are only appended to the end of an append blob when modified using the Append Block method. It is not possible to update or remove already existing blocks. Unlike a block blob, an add blob does not reveal its block IDs.

Page Blob

A page blob is created by initializing it and defining the maximum size it will expand to. You write a page or pages by providing an offset and a range that both lie in 512-byte page boundaries to add or alter the contents of a page blob. You can overwrite a single page, many pages, or as much as 4 MiB of a page blob with a write-to-a-page blob. A page blob can have a maximum size of 8 TiB.

Steps To Create Azure Blob Storage

Here are the steps to create Azure Blob storage:

• Open the Azure Portal and log in.
• Look up "Storage account" using the search box.
• Select the storage account you set up.
• Click containers under Data storage in the left pane. A pane named Containers will open.
• Select + container. The New container blade will appear.
• Enter the container's name in the Name field.
• Select Private (no anonymous access) from the Public access level list box, then click Create.

Blob Storage Security

By putting these suggestions into practice, you'll be able to meet the security demands of blob storage.

• Turn on Microsoft Defender for every storage account you have.
• For containers and blobs, enable soft delete.
• To avoid malicious or unintentional deletions or configuration changes, lock the storage account.
• If a policy involves object replication and requires that the source and destination accounts be in the same tenant, then cross-tenant object replication should be disallowed.
• Restrict the use of shared access signature (SAS) tokens to HTTPS-only connections.
• Ensure all your storage accounts have the Secure transfer required option enabled.
• Set up a storage account using the bare minimal version of Transport Layer Security (TLS).

Hot vs. Cool Blob Storage

Files should be kept on the hot tier if organizations access or edit them often. Of the three Azure Blob Storage types and levels, the hot tier has the lowest access cost and no minimum retention duration but has the highest price per gigabyte.

Data that businesses don't frequently access or modify belongs in the cool storage tier. The data in this tier must still be readily available and online. The cool storage tier costs less per gigabyte than hot storage, but access costs are higher.

Conclusion

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FAQs

1. When should you use Blob Storage?

Blob storage helps developers create data lakes for cloud-based and mobile apps. It can process any kind of data, even files that would normally be placed in a more hierarchical database.

2. What is the difference between Azure Files and Blob Storage?

Large volumes of unstructured data can be stored in Azure Blob Storage, an object store. Azure File Storage, an entirely managed distributed file system built on the SMB protocol, appears like a regular hard drive when mounted.

3. How does Azure Blob Storage compare to S3?

Although S3 offers fast speeds for uploads and downloads, Azure Blob Storage provides more consistent performance for large data storage and analytics. In addition to server-side encryption with Amazon S3-managed keys (SSE-S3), Amazon S3 has security measures. In contrast, Azure Blob Storage has robust security features, including integration of Azure Active Directory for authorization and authentication.

4. What is the difference between Azure Blob Storage and Data Lake? [brief answer]

Azure Blob Storage is a general-purpose, scalable storage service designed for unstructured data like text and binary data. Azure Data Lake is a specialized storage service optimized for big data analytics. It extends Azure Blob Storage with hierarchical namespaces, making it ideal for storing and analyzing vast amounts of structured and unstructured data.