Azure Storage— Creating First Storage account
→ In the last article, we reviewed Azure Storage Account.
→ In today’s article let us quickly create an Azure storage account by understanding the features Microsoft provides.
Creating Azure Storage
→ Click create a Resource button on the Azure homepage.
→ Click the Storage link from the left explorer.
→ Click Create link below the Storage account.
→ Azure theme is similar to most services. Click on Create a new resource.
→ Enter a storage resource group name. Click Ok button
→ We need to enter a storage account name (Note this name should be unique across Azure storage).
→ Select a Region. The nearest region to our server is faster.
NOTE: Azure Pricing changes with region
Eg. Price in South America — Brazil region is expensive compared to US East US region.
→ The next important is the Performace plan — Standard and Premium
Premium Performance Plan:
→ Here Azure provides Solid State Drive (SSD)
→ Here are multiple Premium account types:
a. Block Blob: if there are high transaction rates (i.e. lots of reading and writing requests at a time eg. 32 MB at a time) — general read and writes
b. Page Blog: If we are on the Virtual Machine and want to read somewhere middle of a file this is helpful (not from the beginning) — i.e. random read and writes.
Redundancy Feature:
→ Redundancy means — Keeping multiple copies in certain regions.
→ Based on Standard or Premium features we have redundancy features:
→ Azure provides — zone copy and the local copy
a. Zone Redundant Storage (ZRS) — Copies in all zones
b. Local Redundant Storage (LRS) — Copies locally in the same data centre
Note: Global copy facility is not there at present in Premium
Standard Performance Plan:
→ Here Azure provides a general-purpose v2 feature instead of SSD.
In the Standard performance plan, there are more options for redundancy:
a. Local Redundant Storage (LRS): Copying data in same data centres
b. Geo Redundant Storage (GRS): Takes data outside our region
c. Zone Redundant Storage (ZRS): Copying data in the zones
d. Geo Zone Redundant Storage (GRS): Copying data in global zones.
→ For now, let's choose the least paying option i.e. LRS in the Standard performance plan 😀. Click Next: Advanced method.
→ In the Advanced setting two three points we have to note:
a. Data Lake:
Data Lake: This features is helpful when our app has heavy data workload.
We can check this feature from below
a. Hot, Cool and Archive Tier:
→ These feature is available based on data usage:
Hot Tier: We use this when — Frequently accessing data
Access Price: Very Less, Storage Price: More
Cool Tier: We use this when — Data are not used frequently eg. backups
Access Price: Little more, Storage Price: Half of Hot tier
Archive Tier: This is not available at the time of creation. This has even less costing.
Access Price: Save 90% of Hot tier price, Storage Price: Takes hours to access
→ Click Next:Networking button
→ Here basically we have three options:
a. Enable public access from all networks -This means there is a locked door Anyone with a key can access it.
b. Enable public access from selected virtual and IP addresses.
c. Disable public access and private access — This means like remove the door. Only people inside can access it.
→ Let us select the first option and click the Next: Data protection button.
→ There are many features that can be configured provided by Azure. Need not required at present — recovery, tracking, and so on.
→ Let us see in the screenshots below:
→ Click Next: Encryption button
→ By default Microsoft provides encryption. We can also provide custom encryption or a checkbox for Infrastructure level encryption.
→ Click the Next: Tags button.
→ We may add tags. Click the Next: Review button.
→ Finally let us a review before clicking Create button:
→ Click on Create button after reviewing
→ Deploying will take 20 to 30 seconds
→ Once deployment is complete. Click on Go to resource button.
→ Finally our Azure storage account is created 😀
Closing Thoughts:
In this article, we have created an Azure storage account successfully. We have also reviewed multiple configurations that Azure provides us with.
In the next article, we will be uploading files in Azure Storage and exploring Azure Storage Explorer and Azure Browser.
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