The Windows Azure storage services provide storage for binary and text data, messages, and structured data in Windows Azure
Option 1: Blob – Contains binary data: Blobs are organized by container. Each storage account will be partitioned by hierarchal containers which in turns have one or many blobs. We can store huge amount of data (text, audio, video, images etc…) with association of metadata like author details etc…
Two types of blobs:
·
Block
blobs, which are optimized for streaming. Block blobs are
comprised of blocks, each of which is identified by a block ID. Contain up to
200 GB.
·
Page
blobs, which are optimized for random read/write operations. Page
blobs are a collection of pages. Contain up to 1 TB.
A
URL to refer to a blob includes the account name, the container name, and the
blob name, as follows: http://myaccount.blob.core.windows.net/mycontainer/myblob
Sharing Policy: Container
ACL access:
·
Full
public read access: Container and blob data can
be read via anonymous request.
·
Public
read access for blobs only: Blob data within this container
can be read via anonymous request, but container data is not available.
·
No public read access:
Container and blob data can be read by the account owner only.
Windows Azure Drives:
A Windows Azure drive acts as a local drive mounted on the file system and is
accessible to code running in a role. The data written to a Windows Azure drive
is stored in a page blob defined within the Windows Azure Blob service, and
cached on the local file system.
Delivering High-Bandwidth
Content with the Windows Azure Content Delivery Network:
This
Windows Azure CDN feature enables customers to provide maximum bandwidth
content to their users. As of now, Windows Azure CDN has 18 locations globally
(United States, Europe, Asia, Australia and South America). As Windows Azure
CDN caches Windows Azure blobs at strategically placed locations which is close
to the location from which the request being made. This is applicable to only blobs that are in
public blob containers, which are available for anonymous access.
For more details, refer
here: http://blogs.msdn.com/windowsazure/archive/2009/11/05/introducing-the-windows-azure-content-delivery-network.aspx
Option 2: Table - Entity
Data Store: Tables store data as collections of entities. Table made up
of rows / columns. Entities are similar to rows. A property is a name,
typed-value pair, similar to a column. Don’t consider this as a RDBMS; it is more
similar to ADO.NET Data services with reduced sub set including integer, string
etc... It is mainly for store durable and scalable data structure that can be
queried. It is equivalent of Amazon SimpleDB.
The
operations are almost similar to that of a conventional database – tables. You
can create, query and delete.
Option 3: Queue: It
allows Web role instances to communicate asynchronously with Worker role
instances. It acts as a reliable and persistent messaging between services.
In
all the above options, Windows Azure storage keep the data replicated in many
places and ensure data safety. Even one data copy being deleted or missed out
can be available from another data copy from a data center. Isn’t this cool?
Yes, this is nice feature which provides reliability and business continuity.
Moreover
each of the data storage has a named URI (universal resource identifier) which
can be accessible by any application including on cloud or on premises
application through REST. REST defines an architectural style based on a set of
constraints for building things the “Web” way. For more information on REST,
refer my blog.
Check all my Azure related blogs: http://arunmvp.blogspot.com/search/label/Azure
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