AZ-104 Microsoft Azure Administrator Study Notes

Implement and manage storage

Azure blobs

• Provides object storage for the cloud
• Optimised to support massive amounts of unstructured data
• Unstructured data is data that does not fit a specific model e.g. text and binary data
• Typically used for images/videos , documents which could be used on websites.
• Also good for streaming videos/audio
• Storing of log files, archive or backup data
• Can be accessed using HTTP or HTTPS
• Can be accessed using Azture Storage, PowerShell, Azure CLI, JAJA, PHP, .NET
• The storage account creates a unique namespace that you use to access the data, like http://mystorage.blob.core.windows.net
• Containers in the blob storage are used to organise the blobs within the account (think of them like directories). You can create a unlimited number of containers and a container can store an unlimited number of blobs
• Container names muust be lowercase
• Blobs are the files, so image001.jpg would be considered a blob
• There are 3 types of blobs that are supported:
  • Block blobs
    • These can contain up to about 190.7TiB of text and dinary data
    • They are called block bloba as they can be managed individually
  • Append blobs
    • Similar to block bloba however they are optimised for append operations
    • This makes append blobs a good choice for logging data from virtaul machines
  • Page blobs
    • Used to storage random access files up to 8TiB in size
    • You would typically use page blobks to store VHD files which would serve as disks for Azure virtual machines

Azure files

• Fully managed file share system available in the cloud
• You can access Azure files through SMB protocol
• You can mount file shares from Windows, Linux and MacOS machines that reside both on-prem and in the cloud
• You can cache file shares on Windows servers, using the Azure file sync service

Azure queue storage

• Designed for storing large numbers of messages used in communications between the different components of the distributed application. These messages can be accessed from anywhere in the world through authenticated calls via HTTP or HTTPS.
• Each queue message can be up to 64KB in size
• A typical queue can contain millions of messages

Azure table storage

• This is intended for the storage of structured NoSQL data
• It offers a key/attribute store and a schema-less design
• Schema-less design allows you to more easily adapt data to the needs of your business or application

Azure managed disks

• Block level storage volumes
• These are used to provide storage capabilities for virtual machines
• A managed disk is much like a disk that you would see in an on-prem server only virtualised
• Available disk types are ultra disks, premium SSD disks, standard SSD disks and standard HDD disks

Storage accounts

• A container that houses all of your storage data objects
• All storage is encrypted
• Virtual machines using Premium SSDs for ALL of their disks qualify for a 99.9% SLA
• Zone redundant storage and Geo zone redundant storage are only available for:
  • General-Purpose V2
  • Block Blob Storage
  • File Storage

• Storage account types:
  • General-Purpose V2
    • Basic account that can be used to host blobs, files, queues and tables
    • Microsoft recommends using this account for more scenarios
  • General-Purpose V1
    • Can host blobs, files, queues and tables
    • Can do the same as V2 but Microsoft recommend using V2, this means this V1 is probably going to go away in the near future
  • Block Blob Storage
    • Offers premium performance for block blobs and append blobs
    • Typically used for situations where high transaction rates are in play
    • Also good if the requirement is for low storage latency
  • File Storage
    • Files only storage accounts
    • Feature high performance characteristics
    • Microsoft recommends using for enterprise applications or high-performing applications
  • Blob Storage
    • A legacy account used for blob-storage only
    • Microsoft recommend instead of using blob storage accounts to use General-Purpose V2