Blob Storage: How to store your data in the Azure cloud

oud computing is increasingly determining what happens in the eCommerce business. The number of providers and services is growing steadily – and with them the benefits of a cloud solution. With Azure, Microsoft operates one of the largest server networks in the world. Storage in the Azure Cloud is primarily via so-called Blob Storage. In the following, we explain how the service works and how you can use the advantages of Blob Storage for your online business.

Table of content:

What is Blob Storage?

Alongside Azure Files, Disks and Tables, Blob Storage is one of four Azure storage services and is used to store unstructured data that does not conform to a fixed data model. This primarily concerns texts and so-called binary data. This is where the perhaps somewhat unconventional name comes from: Blob stands for Binary Large Objects. This includes image files, video files and other media data. In addition to pure storage, the service also enables the development of container-based applications in a cloud environment.

What are the usage requirements?

The prerequisite for using Blob Storage is an Azure Storage Account, which can be added to an existing Azure Subscription at any time. One storage account offers approximately 5500 terabytes of storage space. However, multiple storage accounts can be created within a subscription if a larger amount of storage is required.

How is Blob Storage structured?

The Azure storage service is built in three tiers: the account, containers and blobs.

Account

New containers can be created and removed at the account level. Each account must have a globally unique account name that is played out in the address of each uploaded object.

Example: For the account name youraccount, the base address would look like this, “https://ihrkonto.blob.core.windows.net”.

Containers

Containers are used to organize blobs and are most easily compared to folder directories in local storage, even though they do not exist in Blob Storage. The Storage service follows a flat hierarchy without a folder structure, but file paths can be assigned during upload to simulate this.

Example: https://ihrkonto.blob.core.windows.net/images/ordner1/image001.png

In our example, the image001.png image file, located in the images container, was uploaded under the file path ordner1. When we access the container, a corresponding folder is simulated. However, when we delete the file, the folder is automatically removed as well, showing that it did not really exist.
Within an account, any number of containers can be created. The only limitation here is the storage capacity of the storage account.

Blobs

The actual data that is uploaded via Blob Storage is referred to as blobs. In practice, three types of blobs are distinguished.

Blob types

Blockblobs

Block blobs represent the most common form of blobs. As the name suggests, they consist of blocks that can be managed independently of one another. In principle, it is possible to store several files in one block, but a single block can have a maximum size of 190.7 TiB (TiB = Tebibyte, one Tebibyte corresponds to approx. 1.099 Terrabyte). Once uploaded, block blobs can be deleted or overwritten, but existing block blobs are immutable.

Appendblobs

For certain file types, it can be useful if they can be updated, for example for log files that are updated automatically and should not be completely recreated for each log. This is the purpose of the append blob, which also consists of a block but, unlike the block blob, allows new information to be added.

Pageblobs
Pageblobs or page blobs can be used to store blocks with a maximum size of 8 TiB that allow read and write access at any point (this option is called random access). Page blobs store so-called VHD files (= Virtual Hard Drive) and are used when a virtual machine is to be hosted in a cloud.

Blobstorage advantages – why cloud storage is worth it

Now that the technical basics of blob storage have been clarified, online retailers are right to ask themselves: What are the actual benefits of cloud storage? To put it simply, the same advantages apply to blob storage as to cloud hosting in general.

Fail-safe

When you create your Azure storage account, you can choose one of four models that will determine how your data is stored in Azure storage.

• Locally Redundant Storage (LRS = 3 times replication of your data within one data center)

• Zone-redundant Storage (ZRS = Replication to three different data centers within one geographic region)

• Geo-redundant Storage (GRS = Replication to 3 data centers in each of two different geographic regions)

• Read-access-geo-redundant Storage (RA-GRS, like GRS, except that you can decide which zone you want to access)

By default, the first option, Locally Redundant Storage (LRS), is selected, which offers no physical separation but is more cost-effective. Redundant storage ensures that your data is still available even if one hard disk, an entire data center, or even an entire region fails.

Speed

Blob Storage lets you store and process data in a scalable environment and ensures that it can be retrieved reliably and without delay, even during peak loads.
This can be checked very well in the demo of our product configurator. Here, the necessary image files are stored in the Blob Storage, so the Apache server does not have to request them from the server first. Instead, a fixed, public URL of the respective image is retrieved directly. This is done with almost no loading time.

Accessibility

The migration of your data to the cloud can be done location-independently and via a wide variety of solutions. For data import and export, in addition to free tools (e.g. Cloud Explorer for Microsoft Visual Studio), various REST APIs exist for the most common programming languages, including Typo: Python, C#, Java and PHP.

Privacy

Blob Storage uses role-based access control (also called Rolebased Access or RBAC) and encrypts all data to protect it from unauthorized access.

Cost efficiency

The automatic scaling of the cloud ensures that your system is always dimensioned according to demand. You only pay for what you actually use.

ESYON and Blob Storage

As a certified cloud solution provider (CSP), ESYON hosts your customers’ projects in the Azure cloud, using services such as Blob Storage. Cloud computing allows us rapid development sprints, which enable us to implement individual customer requirements with a short time-to-market.