Well, let's start from the basics.
What is a blob?
A blob is a binary, large object. For example, a pdf document will be stored in binary format. Basically, binary means 0s and 1s. The file is stored as huge amount of binary data.
What is the purpose of Azure Blob Storage?
Azure Blob Storage is designed for storing various types of files usually heavy in the size or showing a preview of the document.
User stores pdfs, images or other files and documents. These need to be stored in a common place. Some operations such as view, download, search are performed on these blobs.
Since files are stored as binary, searching the content that belongs inside the document is faster and easier. Azure Cognitive Search can be used to feed information to indexes.
How is the structure of the Blob storage in Azure?
In Azure, Blob Storage must have an account.
There can be many containers under one account. Containers are logical separation of the blobs.
Single container can contain many files. Usually, common types of blobs are stored inside one container. For example, you can store extension wise files in various containers.
How cost for the storage is decided in Azure Blob storage?
Data storage prices are decided as per pay-as-you-go model.
To understand the exact pricing, we must understand the types of tiers that belong to Azure Blob storage first.
Premium tier - Fastest access compared to all tiers as SSD's are used to store the data but costliest option.
Hot tier - Faster to access compared to below tiers but has higher cost than below tiers.
Cool tier - Slower than Hot tier but it is cheaper than hot tier.
Cold tier - Data retention period is more compared to the Cool tier and cheaper than the Cool tier.
Archive tier - Need to hydrate the data in advance before accessing it so a slower option but it is cheapest among all.
Look at the table below:
[For further understanding please ref: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-in/pricing/details/storage/blobs/]
We will be looking at how to setup Azure Blob storage account on Azure Portal.
1) Search "storage account" in search box. Click on "Storage accounts".
2) Click on + Create.
3) Fill the mandatory information as follows and click on Review.
4) Click on Create.
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