Describe Azure Storage Accounts

Question 1

What is an Azure Storage account?

Answer 1

• provides a unique namespace for your azure storage data that is accessible from anywhere in the world
• data in the account is secure, highly available and massively scalable

Question 2

What are the types of storage accounts?

Answer 2

• Standard general purpose V2
• Premium block blobs
• Premium file shares
• Premium page blobs

Question 3

How do endpoints work with azure storage accounts?

Answer 3

• each account has a unique namespace in azure for data
• combination of the unique account name and storage service endpoint forms the endpoints for storage account
• account names must be 3-24 chars with only numbers and lowercase letters

Question 4

In general terms how does Azure provide storage redundancy?

Answer 4

• stores multiple copies so its protected from hardware failures, network or power outages and natural disasters
• replicated 3 times in the primary region
• ensures that the storage account meets its availability and durability targets even in the face of failures

Question 5

What is locally redundant storage (LRS)?

Answer 5

• redundancy in primary region
• replaces data 3 times within a single data center
  provides 11 nines of durability of objects over a given year (99.999999999%)
• lowest cost option
• least durability
• protects against hardware failures but not against whole datacenter failures
• ZRS, GRS and GZRS are recommended by Microsoft

Question 6

What is zone redundant storage (ZRS)?

Answer 6

• redundancy in the primary region
• for availability zone-enabled regions, ZRS replicates data synchronously across 3 zones in the primary region
• 12 nines of durability
• data is accessible for both read and write ops even if a zone becomes unavailable
• If zone becomes unavailable azure undertakes networking updates
• recommends using ZRS in primary regions that require high availability
• recommended for restricting replication of data within a country or region to meet with gov compliance

Question 7

In general terms what is redundancy in the secondary region?

Answer 7

• copy data to a secondary region that is hundreds of miles away from the primary region
• data is durable even in the event of a catastrophic failure
• when creating account you select primary region, the secondary region is based on region pairs
• by default data in secondary region isnt available for read or write access unless there’s a failover to the secondary region. In which case the secondary becomes primary

Question 8

What is geo-redundant storage (GRS)?

Answer 8

-redundancy in secondary region
- copies data synchronously 3 times within a single physical location using LRS and then asynchronously to another single location in the secondary region (region-pair) using LRS
- 16 nines of durability

Question 9

What is geo-zone redundant storage (GZRS)?

Answer 9

• redundancy in secondary region
• combines high availability provided by redundancy across availability zones, with protection from regional outages provided by geo-replication
• data is copied across 3 availability zones in the primary region and is also replicated to a secondary geographic region using LRS
• recommended for apps requiring max consistency, durability and availability, performance and resilience for disaster recovery
• 16 nines of durability

Question 10

How does read access to data in a secondary region work?

Answer 10

• if you enable read access to the secondary region your data is always available even when the primary region is running optimally

Question 11

What is RPO?

Answer 11

• due to asynchronous copy of data to secondary region a failure that affects primary region may result in data loss if the primary region cant be recovered
• the interval between the most recent writes to the primary region and the last write to the secondary region is known as the recovery point objective (RPO)
• indicates point in time to which data can be recovered

Question 12

What are the benefits of azure storage?

Answer 12

• Durable and highly available; data redundancy and replication in cause of failures such as natural disasters or hardware
• Secure; encrypted
• Scalable; meets demands and needs
• Managed; azure handles hardware maintenance, updates and crit issues
• Accessible; accessible from anywhere in the world over HTTP or HTTPS, Microsoft provides client libraries for azure storage in a variety of languages

Question 13

What is blob storage?

Answer 13

• object storage
• stores mass amounts of data such as text or binary
• unstructured so no restrictions on data type
• reached from anywhere with internet
• arent limited to common file formats; doesn’t require devs to think about or manage disks

Question 14

What is blob storage best used for?

Answer 14

• serving images or docs directly to browser
• Storing files for distributed access
• Streaming video and audio
• Storing data for backup and restore, disaster recovery, and archiving
• Storing data for analysis by an on-premises or Azure-hosted service

Question 15

what is the blob storage hot access tier?

Answer 15

• optimised for storing data that is accessed frequently (e.g. images for website)

Question 16

what is blob storage cool access tier?

Answer 16

• optimised for data that is infrequently accessed and stored for at least 30 data (e.g. invoices for customers)

Question 17

what is blob storage archive access tier?

Answer 17

• data that is rarely accessed and stored for at least 180 days, with flexible latency requirements (long-term backups)

Question 18

what considerations apply to different access tiers?

Answer 18

• only hot and cool tiers can be set at the account level, the archive tier isn’t available at this level
• all 3 tiers can be set at the blob level during or after upload
• data in the cool tier can tolerate lower availability but requires high durability, retrieval latency and throughput similar to hot data, high access costs but low storage costs
  -archive stores data offline and offers lowest storage cost but highest cost to access

Question 19

what is azure files?

Answer 19

• fully managed file shares in the cloud that are accessible via Server Message Block or Network File System
• can be mounted by cloud or on-premises deployments
• Cross-platform via SMB but only linus and Mac with NFS

Question 20

What are azure files key benefits?

Answer 20

• shared access; seamlessly replace on-prem file shares with azure file shares without worrying about application compatibility
• fully managed
• scripting and tooling
• resiliency
• familiar programmability

Question 21

What is queue storage?

Answer 21

• stores large number of messages
• access them from anywhere in the world via auth calls using HTTP and HTTPS
• each message can be 64KB in size
• used to create a backlog of work to process asynchronously
• can be combined with azure functions

Question 22

what is disk storage?

Answer 22

• managed disks
• block level volumes managed by azure for use with VMs
• the same as physical disks but virtualised
• offer greater resiliency and availability than physical disks
• all you have to do is provision the disk, azure does the rest

Question 23

What is azure mirgrate?

Answer 23

• service that helps you migrate from an on-premises environment to the cloud
• functions as a hub to help manage the assessment of migration of your on-prem datacenter to azure

Question 24

what does azure migrate provide?

Answer 24

• unified migration platform; single portal to start run and track migration
• range of tools
• assessment and migration; can access and migrate your on-prem infrastructure to azure

Question 25

what tools does azure migrate provide?

Answer 25

• discovery and assessment
• server migration
• assistant
• DB migration service
• web app migration assistant
• data box

Question 26

what is Azure Data box?

Answer 26

• physical migration service that helps transfer large amounts of data in quick, inexpensive and reliable way
• you get shipped a propiertary data box device that has a max usable capacity of 80 terabytes
• transported to and from your datacenter by region carrier in a rugged case
• entire process tracked end-to-end by the data box service in portal

Question 27

what are examples of when azure data box would be used to import data to azure?

Answer 27

• onetime migration to azure
• moving a media library from offline tapes into azure to create an online media library
• migrating your VM farm, SQL server and apps to azure

Question 28

what are examples of when azure data box would be used to export data from azure?

Answer 28

• disaster recovery
• security requirements; due to gov compliance
• migrate back to on prem or another cloud provider

Question 29

What is AzCopy?

Answer 29

• Command line utility that you can use to copy blobs or files to or from your storage account
• you can upload, download and copy files and even synch files between storage accounts
• can work with other cloud providers to help move files

Question 30

what is azure storage explorer?

Answer 30

• standalone app that provides graphical interface to manage files and blobs in your azure storage account
• windows, macOS and Linux
• uses AzCopy on the backend
• you can upload to and download from Azure or move between storage accounts

Question 31

What is azure file sync?

Answer 31

• tool that lets you centralise file shares in Azure files and keep the flexibility, performance and compatibility of a windows file server
• like turning windows file server into a mini content delivery network
• once installed on local win server it will auto stay bi-directionaly synched with your files in azure

Question 32

What does azure file sync enable?

Answer 32

• use any protocol thats available on win server to access your data locally
• replace a failed local server by installing azure file sync on a new server in the same datacenter
• configure cloud tiering so the most frequently accesses files are replicated locally, while infrequently accessed files are kept in the cloud until requested