Azure Storage: Features and Services
Microsoft Azure is one of the top cloud service providers in the IT industry. With the introduction of new approaches in the cloud, it is important to pay attention to services like storage to benefit most. When it comes to storage, Microsoft Azure serves as the ideal cloud storage solution with high scalability, durability, and availability requirements for modern applications.
We bring to you all the features and storage services offered by Microsoft Azure that makes it the first choice partner for cloud storage services.
Features of Azure Storage
- Azure Storage is highly durable and available which means data can be easily safeguarded from general hardware failures. You are also offered the option of replicating data across multiple data centers and geographical regions which adds extra protection from natural disasters.
- The entire data is written with encryption, you are offered higher security as compared to other cloud services. The companies can also avail of fine-grained control over access privileges taking the security upper notch.
- Challenges like data storage and performance in modern applications can be easily handled with a highly scalable Azure storage design.
- Inherent advantages of hardware maintenance, updates, and resolution of critical issues are provided along with the facility of storage as a fully managed service.
Types of Storage Services
Azure Blob: Azure Blob is one of the most prominent storage services which makes for an ideal choice as an object storage solution for the cloud. Large volumes of unstructured data such as binary data are stored using blob storage. From documents or images, all sorts of media can be directly e-soft to a browser and files can be stored for distributed access with the help of blob storage. Whether it is streaming audio and video or storing data for disaster recovery, backup, or restoring; blob storage is the perfect choice for all.
Azure Files: One of the most important types of storage services offered by Azure is the Azure Files. Network file shares with high availability for access through the standard server message block protocol are established with the help of this service. This results in enabling multiple virtual machines to share similar files with reading and writing access. This service allows you to access files from anywhere in the world using a URL with a shared access signature (SAS) token. Ideally, Azure files are used for on-premises applications and file configurations.
Azure Queue: This service is prominently used for storing and retrieving messages ranging up to 64 kb in size. The application of this service can be seen in the storage of lists of messages for asynchronous processing.
Azure Managed Disk: Another important type of Azure storage option is the Azure Managed Disk which is also a virtual hard disk. Similar to a normal hard disc, these provide functionality like an on-premises server but in a virtualized form. The storage is offered in the form of page blobs containing random input-output storage objects. The managed description provides storage accounts and blob containers along with page blobs.