Develop Solutions with Blob Storage

Question 1

Blob Storage

Types of unstructured data

Answer 1

Text
(1) Text
(2) Log
Binary
(3) Images/Videos
(4) Virtual Disks

Question 2

Blob Storage

Storage account name restrictions

Answer 2

(1) 3 - 24 characters
(2) lower case letters and numbers only

Question 3

Blob Storage

Does Blob support sub folders

Answer 3

No, but can use “virtual” folders by prepending a name
i.e., /mysubfolder/myblob.txt

Question 4

Blob Storage

Two kinds of performance

Answer 4

(1) Standard > magnetic disks
(2) Premium > SSD

Question 5

Blob Storage

Account Kinds

Answer 5

(1) Storage V2
(2) Storage V1
(3) Basic

Basic doesn’t have queues, fileshare and table storage
Storage V1 is previous version and not recommended for new accounts

Question 6

Blob Storage *

Create a storage account using CLI

Answer 6

az storage account create –name $acctname
–resource-group $rgname
[–location $loc
–sku $sku (Standard_RAGRS)
–kind StorageV2]

Question 7

Blob Storage *

Create a storage account using Powershell

Answer 7

New-AzStorageAccount
-Name $accountname
-ResourceGroupName $rgname
-Location $loc
-SkuName $sku (Standard_RAGRS)
[-Kind StorageV2]

Question 8

Azure Blob

Types of authorization

Answer 8

(1) Shared Key (Storage Account Key)
(2) Shared Access Signature
(Token applied to a blob URL)
(3) Azure Active Directory
(4) Anonymous Public Read Access
(At container level)

Question 9

Azure Blob *

Types of Blobs
(Note the difference between Standard/Premium)

Answer 9

(1) Block Blob
(2) Append Blob
(3) Page Blob

Blob blobs => stores its contents in seperate blocks and files are overwritten
Append Blobs => Use for logging
Page Blobs => for VHD, must have random read/writes

Question 10

Azure Blob *

What are the replication strategies?

Answer 10

(1) LRS
(2) ZRS
(3) GRS
(4) GZRS
(5) RA-GRS
(6) RA-GZRS

Failover takes about an hour

Question 11

Blob Storage

Basic objects used in SDK to connection to a blob?

Answer 11

(1) BlobServiceClient (storage account)
(2) BlobContainerClient (Blob Container)
(3) BlobClient (blobs)

Question 12

Blob Storage

Understanding properties and metadata
What are the Blob Container System Properites?
What are the Blob System Properites?
What metadata do they share?

Answer 12

Blob Container System Properties
(1) ETag
(2) Last Modified
Blob
(1) ETag
(2) LastModified
(3) Content-Type
(4) Content-Length
(5) x-ms-blob-type
Common
User defined metadata and string-based key-value pairs
i.e. metadata.Add(“Category”, “Landscapes”);

Question 13

What are the tiers and costs associated?

Answer 13

(1) Hot
storage high, transaction cost low
(2) Cool
storage medium, transaction cost medium
(3) Archive
storage low, transaction cost high

Can set the access tier individually for blob blobs
Archived blobs are offline. You can see the properites but not the blob itself until its access level has been changed. Rehydrating can take several hours
Example of setting access tier to a blob in code: await blobclient.SetAccessTierAsync(AccessTier.Cool)

Question 14

Blob Storage

What is the Azure CLI for changing tier level?

Answer 14

az storage blob set-tier
–account-key $acctkey
–accountname $accountname
–container-name $containername
–name myphoto.jpg
–tier Cool

Question 15

Blob Storage

What is lifecylce management?

Answer 15

Allows you to create rules such as checking last modified date and moving blob(s) to another tier or deleting them.
Can be filtered for specific blobs
Runs once a day

Question 16

Blob Storage *

What’s the difference between snapshots and versions?

Answer 16

(1) A snapshot is a read-only copy of a blob at a point in time
(2) Version - You can upload a file with the same name and override the existing, yet a version of the previous file is saved. You can then go back and set the older version of the file. MUST HAVE VERSIONING ENABLED AT THE ACCOUNT LEVEL - it isn’t enabled by default

Question 17

Azure Blob *

What is working with Leases?

Answer 17

If a lease is created, the blob cannot be Edited or Deleted.
The lease status is Locked and the lease duration is infinite.
You must click on “Break Lease”

Question 18

Azure Blob

What is another more powerful way to provide immutability to blob(s)?

Answer 18

Add a policy for immutable blob storage and select either Legal Hold or Time Retention

Legal Hold - Add a tag to identify reason for legal hold. Need to remove policy in order to remove legal hold.
Time Retention - set to number of days. Blob can still be modified but not deleted

Question 19

Azure Blob

What is the Azure CLI command for copying between Storage Accounts and Containers?

Answer 19

az storage blob copy start
–source-account-name $sourcename
–source-account-key $acctkey1
–source-container $containername
–source-blob $blobname
–account-name $destinationname
–account-key $acctkey2
–destination-container $destinationcontainername
–destination-blob $blobname

See image for batch copy

Question 20

Azure Blob

What is AzCopy?

Answer 20

An Azure command line utility to help in copying blobs from local to Azure or from container to container

azcopy copy “Sourcepath” “targetpath” –recursive=true

Also see example between storage acounts - example shows using a SAS