From the course: Azure Solutions Architect Expert (AZ-305) Cert Prep: Design Data Storage Solutions

Unstructured data and Azure Storage - Azure Tutorial

From the course: Azure Solutions Architect Expert (AZ-305) Cert Prep: Design Data Storage Solutions

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Unstructured data and Azure Storage

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- [Instructor] One of the most common ways of storing unstructured data in Azure is in a storage account. Azure storage accounts support unstructured data through support for blobs, files, and disks. If we start to create a storage account in the Azure Portal, we are immediately making decisions around the design of our storage account, how it will perform, and which options will be available for use cases. First, we have regional considerations. Do your customers require their data to be kept in their region for data residency and data sovereignty reasons? This is going to affect the Region that you choose when creating your storage account, along with the network latency for your use case. How are you going to be accessing this data? I'm going to choose UK West, because this is the closest to where I am at the moment. Next, Performance. This governs the account type. If you haven't been in the Portal for a while, you may be wondering where the other account types are. Moving back up before the Storage account name, we have a note stating if you need to create a legacy account type to click here. Scrolling down, now we can see the legacy Storage v1 and BlobStorage types. These are no longer recommended by Microsoft but can still be used if you require storage for a classic deployment. I want to use a Microsoft-recommended account type. So I'll close this tab and go back to the original Create page. Performance-wise, you can choose Standard, also known as a general-purpose v2 account, or Premium. Standard uses HDD or hard drives, which limit your IOPS to 20,000 per second. But you can store a mix of blobs, files, and unmanaged disks all within one storage account. This may sound like a way of keeping maintenance down, but it is recommended to create at least one account for each data type, as you may find mixing resources together makes troubleshooting performance issues difficult, as storage resources such as Azure file shares and blob containers share storage account limits. Selecting Premium also enables the Premium account type dropdown. We can no longer select an account type which will hold blobs, files, and disks together. They are now separated to meet the limits of their specific use cases. These are all backed by solid state drives or SSDs. Premium Block blobs are designed for low and consistent latency and high throughput for smaller blobs. The total cost to store the Premium blob is higher, but the cost for transaction is lower. Therefore, there is a crossover when a high-transaction rate on a Standard account may be more cost-effective on a Premium account. The fast response times and high transaction rates of Premium blobs make them great for IoT, telemetry, AI, and online transactions. Premium File shares are built for IO-intensive operations with low latency and sub-10 milliseconds for most IO operations. Premium File shares scale throughput and IOPS with size, making them great for various production workloads, including website hosting and FSLogix profile containers for Azure Virtual Desktop. Premium Page blobs are for random read/write operations, most commonly used for Azure IaaS disks. Premium Page blobs bring usual high performance and low latency offerings. However, for IaaS disks in Azure, it is recommended to use a managed disk. Once you've chosen your Region or account type, you can move between them, but not automatically. To switch between Regions, or Standard to Premium, you must create a new storage account and copy the data across, using a tool such as AZCopy. I'm going to choose Standard for now, and in the next video, we'll explore Redundancy options.

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