Talking about Windows Azure storage Service

Source: Internet
Author: User
Tags azure cdn azure sdk

we are now in the midst of a data explosion, with big data and open data firing in full swing, suggesting that the data is invaluable to us.

saving, managing, and maintaining data has become an important challenge for businesses. The growing volume of procurement, deployment, and data size of a large number of storage devices makes it possible for the cloud to have new options for applications that require scalable, durable, and highly available storage for their data, which is why Microsoft is developing Azure storage services.

Azure storage services includes BLOB storage, table storage, queue storage, and file storage. These services are included in each storage account.

The storage account is a unique namespace that grants you access to the Azure storage service, which can hold up to 200TB of data per storage account. A subscription supports up to 50 storage accounts, meaning you can store and process petabytes of data.

Shows the relationships between the various Azure storage resources in your storage account:

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Let's take a look at the differences between the various stores


Blob Storage


Blob Storage provides a cost-effective and scalable solution for users with large amounts of unstructured data to store in the cloud. You can use Blob storage to store the following:

    • Document

    • Social data, such as photos, videos, music, and blogs

    • Backup of files, computers, databases, and devices

    • Images and text for WEB applications

    • Configuration data for cloud applications

    • Big data, such as logs and other large datasets

Each BLOB is organized into a container. Containers also provide a useful way to assign security policies to groups of objects. A storage account can contain any number of containers, and a container can contain any number of blobs until the capacity limit of the storage account is limited to a maximum of TB.

Blob storage provides two types of storage services: Block BLOBs and page blobs, and what is the difference between them?


Azure Block Blob


    1. The Azure Block blob concept is similar to a network disk, where you can directly store binary files such as pictures, files, and photos, and can be accessed directly by the client via http:/or https://.

    2. Using Azure Block blobs does not require any azure Virtual machine to be created, directly accessible using

    3. Block blob Single file maximum capacity 200GB

    4. Block blob Single file maximum bandwidth 60mb/s

    5. Block blob support file upload from client (max 4MB per block)


Azure Page Blob


    1. VHD size Max is 1TB (This is why we have additional disks in the virtual machine with a maximum capacity of 1023GB)

An additional 1 Azure Storage account Max ioPS is 20,000, with a maximum of 40 VHDs per VHD, given the Max IOPS of 500 for each of these VHDs.

If you place a total of more than 40 VHDs in the same storage account, the IOPS of the VHD will be severely degraded and not even functioning due to the 20,000 IOPS limit of the individual storage account.


Table Storage


Table storage is a NoSQL key/attribute store for Microsoft-it has a modeless design that makes it different from a traditional relational database. With modeless data storage, you can easily adapt your data to storage as your application needs evolve.

The so-called "key-attribute" store, that is, each value in the table is stored with the name of a property that you type. Property names can filter and specify selection criteria. The property collection and its values make up the entity. Because table storage is modeless, two entities in the same table can contain different sets of properties, and these properties can belong to different types.

You can use table storage to store flexible datasets, such as user data for WEB applications, address books, device information, and any other type of metadata your service requires. You can store any number of entities in one table, and one storage account can contain any number of tables until you reach the storage account's capacity limit of up to TB.

Like BLOBs and queues, developers can use the standard REST protocol to manage and Access table storage, but table storage also supports a subset of the OData protocol, which simplifies advanced query functionality and supports JSON and AtomPub (XML-based) formats


Queue Storage


When designing an application for scalability, it is common to detach individual application components so that they can scale independently. Queue storage provides a reliable messaging solution for asynchronous communication between application components, whether these application components are running on the cloud, on the desktop, on the local server, or on mobile devices. Queue storage also supports managing asynchronous tasks and building process workflows.

A storage account can contain any number of queues. A queue can contain any number of messages until the capacity limit of the storage account reaches a maximum of TB. Each message can be up to a maximum of one KB.


access to BLOBs, tables, queues, and file resources


By default, only the storage account owner can access the resources in the storage account. To ensure the security of your data, every request made to a resource in your account must be authenticated. Authentication relies on a shared key model. BLOBs can also be configured to support asynchronous authentication.

You assigned two private access keys for authentication when you created your storage account. Setting two keys ensures that your application remains available when you periodically regenerate the key (this is a common security key management practice).

If you do not need to implement user controlled access for your storage resources, you can create a shared access signature. A shared access signature is a token that can be attached to a URL that implements delegate access to a container, Blob, table, or queue. Anyone holding a token can access the resource it points to by using the permissions it specifies during the token's validity. Note that Azure file Store shared access signatures are not currently supported.

Finally, you can specify a container and its blobs or a specific blob to be publicly accessible. When you specify that a container or Blob is public, anyone can read it anonymously and no authentication is required. Common containers and blobs are ideal for exposing resources that are hosted on a Web site, such as media and documents. To reduce network latency for your global audience, you can cache the Blob data used by your site through Azure CDN.


reliable data durability and high availability


In terms of redundancy, Windows Azure provides three levels of redundancy for storage:

    • Locally redundant Storage (LRS): Windows Azure maintains multiple copies of data within a region to provide high durability.

    • Geo-redundant storage (GRS): Windows Azure provides additional data durability asynchronously by replicating between two regions within the same region, hundreds of miles apart. In two regions, Windows Azure maintains multiple copies of data.

    • Read access geo-redundant storage (RA-GRS): In addition to geo-redundant storage services, Windows Azure provides read-only access to storage accounts in the secondary zone, which has a final, consistent version of the data in the primary storage system. Customers can use this service to access their data when a storage account in the primary region is unavailable.


How is data redundancy guaranteed for Windows Azure storage services?


Windows Azure provides geo-redundancy. Two data centers in Beijing and Shanghai, China, are connected by exclusive 10G bandwidth. In terms of data storage, Azure supports two modes:

File redundancy in the same datacenter, which is a triple backup of the same data center file.

Geographically redundant data centers, where files are also triple-redundant in offsite data centers, with a total of 6 backups in two different data centers.

For example, a user uploads a file to a Windows Azure datacenter in Shanghai and opens geo-redundancy. First the user's files will be backed up in a triple backup in the Shanghai Data Center, and Windows Azure will take advantage of the dedicated line between Shanghai and Beijing, as well as a triple backup of the asynchronous data center in Beijing. In some extreme cases, it is assumed that the data center in Shanghai is completely down due to earthquakes, wars, floods and other reasons, and that the user's files can be safely stored in Beijing's data center and will not be lost.



quickly create and manage storage accounts from the Windows Azure portal


Go to the Management portal for Azure, click New > Data Services > Storage > Quick Create, enter the URL of the storage account (unique), select geo-redundancy or other.

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Complete the new, and you'll see the built-in storage account in the portal

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Click on the storage account you just built and go to the Quick Launch page of this storage account to download the storage resource Manager and Microsoft Azure SDK.

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Under Portal, click Manage access keys

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In the dialog box that appears, you can see that there are 2 keys that we can regenerate or copy

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In monitoring, set the monitoring level and data retention policy for each service:

    • Minimal-collects aggregated metrics such as ingress/egress, availability, latency, and percentage of success for BLOBs, tables, and queue services.

    • In the Windows Azure storage Services API, collect the same set of metrics for each storage operation in detail, in addition to minimal monitoring measures. Detailed monitoring measures can be used to further analyze issues that occur during application operation.

    • off-turn off monitoring. Existing monitoring data is retained until the retention period ends.

To set the data retention policy, in retention period (days), type the number of days that you want to retain data, ranging from 1365 days. If you do not need to set a retention policy, enter zero.

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Tick the type of log you want to monitor, then click Save

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When using Windows Azure storage services, we can use the following common tools to manipulate your storage account, including:


Azure Storage Explorer


Azure Storage Explorer is a free Azure storage Service view manager that you can use to view various storage types for Windows Azure services, such as table storage, queue storage, Blob storage, and query, delete, and other operations on the data inside.

Azure Storage Explorer is an open source software that is published in http://azurestorageexplorer.codeplex.com/

For users in China, to download the Azure Storage Explorer tool for Windows Azure storage services operated by the century, please visit:/http Shaunstorage.blob.core.chinacloudapi.cn/share/azurestorageexplorercn.zip


AzCopy


AzCopy is a command-line utility for working with Windows Azure storage accounts. The utility is designed to simplify and speed up data transfer tasks, allowing you to easily pass data to or from your Windows Azure storage account. Customers can use it as a standalone tool, or they can

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Talking about Windows Azure storage Service

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