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

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

Storage accounts

• A container that houses all of your storage data objects
• All storage is encrypted
• 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

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