Storage Flashcards
1
Q
Azure storage accounts
A
- Provides a unique namespace for customer Azure Storage that’s accessible from anywhere in the world over HTTP or HTTPs
- Data is secure, highly available, durable and massively scalable
- Storage types:
- Standard-general purpose v2: standard storage account for blobs, file shares, queues and tables.
- Premium block blobs: recommended for blob storage scenarios with high transaction rates
- Premium file shares
- Premium page blobs
- Every storage account must have a unique-in-Azure account name
2
Q
Azure storage redundancy
A
- Azure Storage always stores multiple copies of a customer’s data, to ensure it meets available and durability targets even in failures
- There are many redundancy options for customers to consider based on their scenario, coming down to a tradeoff between lower costs and higher availability
3
Q
Redundancy in the primary region
A
- Azure Storage always replicates customer data at least 3 times in the primary region. There are two options:
1. Locally redundant storage (LRS): replicates data 3 times within a single data center in the primary region (lowest cost, least durability)
2. Zone redundant storage (ZRS): for AZ-enabled regions, data is replicated synchronously across 3 Azure aZs in the primary region
4
Q
Redundancy in a secondary region
A
- Data is replicated to another region hundreds of miles away, protecting from catastrophic failure in the primary region
- The second region is based on Azure Region Pairs and cannot be changed
- Second region is not available for read or write unless there’s a failover from the primary region
- Two types:
- Geo-redundant storage: data copied synchronously 3 times within a single physical location in the primary region, then copied asynchronously to a single physical location in a secondary region.
- Geo-zone-redundant storage: highest level of redundancy. Data replicated across 3 AZs in the primary region, then replicated to secondary region
5
Q
Benefits of Azure Storage
A
- Durable and highly available: redundancy guarantees due to replication
- Secure: all data is encrypted
- Scalable
- Managed: Azure handles hardware maintenance and updates
- Accessible: from anywhere in the world via HTTP and HTTPS, URLs, REST API, CLI, or SDKs for various languages
6
Q
Azure Blobs
A
- Cloud object storage
- Can store massive amounts of data
- Unstructured, no restrictions on the kinds of data
- Ideal for:
- Serving images or documents to a browser
- Storing files for distributed access
- Streaming video and audio
- Storing data for backup and restore, DR and archiving
- Store data for analysis by on-prem or Azure-hosted services
7
Q
Blob storage tiers
A
- Hot access: optimised for storing data that is accessed frequently (e.g. website)
- Cool access: optimised for data that is infrequently accessed and stored for at least 30 days (e.g invoices)
- Cold access: optimised for data that is infrequently accessed and stored for at least 90 days
- Archive access: appropriate for data that is rarely accessed and stored for at least 180 days
- Hot, cool and cold tiers can be set at the blob level (archive only at the account level)
- Data in cool and cold can tolerate slightly lower availability, but high durability, retrieval latency and throughput
- Archive storage stores data offline and offers the lowest storage costs, but also highest costs to rehydrate and access.
8
Q
Azure Files
A
- Fully managed file shares accessible via industry standard Server Message Blob (SMB) or Network File System (NFS) protocols.
- SMB and NFS protocols make it easy for customers to replace on-prem file shares with Azure file shares
- No need to manage hardware or OS
- Powershell cmdlets and Azure CLI can be used to create, mount and manage file shares
- Resilient: always available
- Applications running in Azure can access data in the share via a file system I/O API
9
Q
Azure Queues
A
- Service for storing large numbers of messages.
- A queue can contain as many messages as the storage account has room for
- Each message can be up to 64kb in size
- Can be combined with compute functions like Azure Functions to take action when a message is received
10
Q
Azure Disks
A
- Block-level storage volumes managed by Azure for use with Azure VMs.
- Same as a physical disk, but virtualised
11
Q
Azure Tables
A
- Stores large amounts of structured data
- Are a NoSQL datastore that accepts authenticated calls from inside and outside the Azure cloud
- Ideal for storing structured, non-relational data
12
Q
Azure Migrate
A
- Helps clients migrate from on-prem to cloud
- Includes:
- a single portal to start, run and track the migration
- Assessment and migration tools, such as Discovery and Assessment for finding on-prem servers and Server Migration for actually migrating those servers
- Data migration assistant to assess SQL Servers
- Database migration service to actually migrate on-prem databases
- App Service migration assistant to assess on-prem websites for migration
- Azure Data Box
13
Q
Azure Data Box
A
- Physical migration service for migrating large amounts of offline data, whereby a Data Box is shipped to the on-prem location that has a max storage capacity of 80 TB.
- Once data is transferred, customer returns the box to Microsoft who upload the data to Azure
(can also be used for exporting data from Azure)
14
Q
File movement options: AzCopy
A
- Command line utility that can be used to copy blobs or files to or from a customer’s storage account
- Upload, download, copy and synchronise files between storage accounts or even other cloud providers
15
Q
File movement options: Azure Storage Explorer
A
Standalone app that provides a UI to manage files and blobs in Azure Storage. Uses AzCopy in the backend to perform file and blob management tasks, such as uploading to or downloading from Azure, or moving between storage accounts
