Module 2c - Exploring Azure Core Products - Storage Flashcards
What’s an Azure Storage Account?
Give two (2) important aspects about the account.
How can you create an account?
The account where all your data objects are stored (ex. blobs, files, disks).
- All Storage Services (can) use this account to reference your data
- Data in the account is secure, highly available, durable and massively scalable.
You create the account via Portal, CLI or PowerShell
How do you access a file in Azure File Storage?
Use its public endpoint
How do you provide SECURE access to a file in Azure File Storage?
Shared Access Key (SAS) tokens.
If you want to provide private access to a file in the File Share, give that file a SAS token. Tokens can be used to restrict/give access to certain file types or accounts, OR allow access for a certain amount of time~
To use the token, append its value to a “sig” param in the request’s query string, or use it in Azure Storage Explorer
What is the Hot Access Tier?
High storage cost, lowest transaction cost. This is for data accessed FREQUENTLY
What is the Cold/Cool Access Tier?
What amount of time in storage qualifies data for Cold/Cool Tier?
Lower storage cost, higher data access cost. This is for data accessed INFREQUENTLY.
Stored for at least 30 days
What is the Archive Access Tier?
Where is it stored and for what minimum amount of time?
Lowest storage cost, highest data retrieval cost. Great when you just need to archive data, but retrieving it is costly and could take hours (the data is offline). Stored for at least 180 days
Which Access Tiers can be configured at the Account level? Which ones cannot?
Only Hot and Cool tiers can be configured at the Account level. Archive cannot
Cool Tier data can tolerate lower availability but still require high durability, with retrieval latency and throughput characteristics similar to hot data.
What’s the trade off here and why is it acceptable?
A slightly lower availability (ie lower SLA) + higher access costs are acceptable due to lower storage costs.
In other words, consider using Cold Tier for cheap storage to offset the cost of “Hot” access when the latter may cost less than actually storing it
Archive storage has the lowest storage and rehydration/retrieval/access costs (T/F)?
False, it has the lowest storage cost (stored offline) but the highest retrieval and read access cost
What is Disk Storage?
A VM can have multiple disks (T/F)?
What are the two (2) types of drives?
Disks for VMs
A VM can have multiple Disks (ex. one for OS, one or more for Data)
Can be Solid State (SSD) or Hard Disk (HDD) with various performance tiers.
You can use Azure Disk Storage to store a VM disk outside its VM (T/F)
False
Annualized Failure Rate for delivering Enterprise-grade durability for IaaS disks is 99.99% SLA (T/F)?
FALSE….it’s actually 100% / ZERO% failure rate.
What are some example scenarios when you’d use:
- SSD or HDD?
- Premium SSD?
- Ultra Disks?
- Standard SSD and HDD for less-critical workloads
- Premium SSD for mission-critical production apps
- Ultra Disks for data-intensive workloads, top-tier DBs or transaction-heavy workloads
What is Azure Blob Storage ie what does “BLOB” mean?
Binary Large Object Storage - An OBJECT storage solution for Cloud, which can store text or binary data. A file entity is referred to as a BLOB.
What’s an advantage Blob Storage has over Disk Storage?
It doesn’t require developers to consider or manage disks. Data is uploaded as BLOBS; Azure handles the physical storage needs
Disk Storage on the other hand must define its size prior and must define where the disk be mounted prior to usage
Hint: five (5) items, ones a Use Case
What kind of data is Blob Storage ideal for?
- Images or Docs
- Constantly growing Log files
- Files for distributed access
- Streaming Media (Video or Audio)
- Custom data formats
All Access Tiers can be set at the Blob level (T/F)?
True
Hint: U SU A
What are three features of Blob Storage?
Unstructured - meaning there are no restrictions on the kind of data it can hold
Simultaneous Uploading - can manage thousands of concurrent uploads at a time
Availability - vastly reachable from anywhere with an internet connection
How much data can Blob storage hold for VMs?
Blob storage can hold up to 8TB of data for VMs
Hint: B/R DR A A
What storage tasks is Blob storage suited for?
Storing data for
- Backup/Restore
- Disaster Recovery
- Archiving
- Analysis by on-prem or cloud services
What are blobs stored in?
Blobs are stored in CONTAINERS; a structure that helps you organize blobs depending on business needs
What is Azure Files (File Share)? What protocol does it use?
A fully managed file share in the cloud, accessible via SMB (Server Message Block)
- Can be mounted on On-Prem Windows, Linux or MacOS
- Can be mounted on Azure VMs or other cloud Servies
- Any number of Azure VMs or roles can mount simultaneously
What situations are Azure File Share ideal for?
Azure File Shares are CLOUD File Shares. We can mount an AFS and share it with multiple VMs, On-Prem machines, etc.
- Migrating On-Prem shared data by mounting a File Share using the same Drive Letter as your On-Prem apps require
- Store shared configuration files or as a general file share for multiple (and simultaneous) VM access
- Writing data to File Share for later analysis
Azure Files Share encrypts your data in transit via AES Encryption (T/F)?
Azure File Share does not encrypt your data at rest since Defense in Depth provides multiple layers of protection already (T/F)?
Both are FALSE
- When in transit, the SMB protocol ensures data is encrypted
- When the file is at rest, Azure File Share will ensure encryption of the data
When creating an Azure CDN, the best choice of storage for CDN files is an Azure File Share (T/F)? Why?
False.
File Share is NOT compatible with Azure CDN since File Share uses SMB protocol, which doesn’t work on HTTP (port 80) or HTTPS (port 443)
Note - Best choice is Azure Blob Storage
