Azure Storage Components - Blob - Part One

Introduction

This writing will cover the objective of Azure Storage Services particularly Blob component on Azure Storage. You will get to know about Azure Blob Storage Services and how to implement Azure Blob Storage.

Azure Storage Account

Azure Storage account gives you the access to Azure Storage Services, such as Blobs, Tables, Queues, and Files.

Azure

Azure Blob Storage Service

Azure Blob Storage is a service that stores unstructured data in the cloud as objects and blobs. Blob storage can store any type of text or binary data such as a document, media file, application installer that can be accessed from anywhere in the world with help of HTTP or HTTPS. Blob storage is also known as object storage. We can use Blob storage to expose data publicly or to store application data privately. Blob Service is one of a component on Azure Storage and it holds a container on it.

Blob Service Components

Storage Account - All access towards an Azure Storage account is done through a storage account, the storage account can be a General – Purpose Storage Account or a Blob Storage Account which is specialized for storing objects or blobs.

Container – A container provides the grouping for the set of blobs; it is mandatory that all the blobs are available in a container. An account can contain an unlimited number of containers and it can store an unlimited number of blobs.

Blob – Blob is a file of any type and size, it can be accessed with three types they are

  • Block Blob
  • Append Blob
  • Page Blob

Block Blobs

Block Blobs will help us to store text and binary files such as documents, media files, etc., A single block blob can hold up to 50,000 blocks which are made up of 100 MB each, as an overall, it will result in a total size of 4.75 TB or a bit higher than that.

Append Blobs

Append blob is also similar to block blobs. Append blob is made up of blocks and optimised for append operations so that it will help us for logging scenarios.

Page Blobs

Page blob can be up to 1 TB in size and are more efficient for frequent read and write operations. Azure Virtual Machines will be using Page Blobs for the scenarios of OS and Data Disks.

Common uses of Blob Storage

  • We can use Azure Blob Storage for storing files on distributed access.
  • For Streaming video and audio.
  • For storing data towards backup and restore, disaster recovery, and archiving.
  • For Storing data towards analysis towards on-premise or Azure hosted service.
  • For serving images or documents directly to a browser.

The Blob storage goes with a step by step module for implementation

Module 1

Creating a Container using Visual Studio.

Module 2

Uploading a Blob.

Module 3

Setting container properties and metadata.

Module 4

Accessing Blob securely.

Module 5

Copying Blobs asynchronously between containers.

Module 6

Adding CDN in front of the storage account.

Module 7

Adding Directories and Sub-Directories to Blob Containers.

Module 8

Using custom domain names with the storage account.

Summary

Hope this article helps you out to get familiar with Azure Storage Blob component. Keep following my next articles to work on further modules.