Azure Blob Storage – Complete Overview

 

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🔷 What is Azure Blob Storage?

Azure Blob Storage is Microsoft Azure’s object storage solution for the cloud, designed to store massive volumes of unstructured data such as text or binary files.

Blob = Binary Large Object

• Data is structured as:
  Storage Account → Containers → Blobs

• Each blob is uniquely addressable via a REST-based URL.

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🔷 Types of Azure Blobs

Blob Type	Description	Use Case
Block Blobs	Store text and binary data	Images, videos, documents
Append Blobs	Optimized for append operations	Logging, auditing
Page Blobs	Optimized for random read/write operations (512-byte pages)	Azure VM disks (VHD files)

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🔷 When to Use Azure Blob Storage

Use Azure Blob Storage for:

• Hosting media content (images, videos, audio)

• Application logs and telemetry

• Backups, snapshots, and archives

• Static website hosting

• CI/CD build artifacts storage

• IoT and streaming data

• Data lake for analytics and ML workloads

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🔷 DevOps Engineer Use Cases

🛠️ Artifact Storage

• Store build outputs like .jar, .zip, .dll, etc.

• Integrates with Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions, Jenkins.

📦 Pipeline Integration Example

bash
az storage blob upload \
  --account-name mystorageaccount \
  --container-name artifacts \
  --name app-build.zip \
  --file ./builds/app-build.zip \
  --auth-mode login

🔐 Environment Config & Secrets

• Store configs per environment.

• (Note: For secrets, prefer Azure Key Vault.)

📊 Logging & Monitoring

• Centralized logging from Azure VMs, App Services.

• Long-term storage of diagnostic logs.

💾 Disaster Recovery & Backup

• Backup state files, infra scripts, app configurations.

• Enable geo-redundant storage for resiliency.

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🔷 Azure Blob Storage Tiers

Tier	Use Case	Cost Characteristics
Hot	Frequently accessed data	High storage cost, low access cost
Cool	Infrequently accessed data (≥30d)	Lower storage cost, higher access cost
Archive	Rarely accessed data (≥180d)	Lowest storage cost, high latency to access (hours)

🔁 Use lifecycle management policies to auto-transition blobs between tiers.

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🔷 Redundancy & Replication Options

Redundancy Option	Description
LRS	Locally Redundant (within 1 datacenter)
ZRS	Zone-Redundant (across 3 Availability Zones)
GRS	Geo-Redundant (replicated to secondary region)
RA-GRS / GZRS	Read-access Geo + Zonal Redundancy for best resilience

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🔷 Security Features

• Encryption:

  • SSE with Microsoft-managed or Customer-managed Keys (CMK)

• Private Endpoints:

  • Access Blob via Azure VNet—no internet exposure

• Access Control:

  • RBAC via Azure AD

  • Shared Access Signatures (SAS)

  • Access Control Lists (ACLs)

• Immutable Storage:

  • Time-based or Legal Hold for compliance (e.g., financial data retention)

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🔷 Tools for Managing Azure Blob Storage

Tool	Use
Azure Portal	Web-based management
Azure CLI / PowerShell	Scripting, automation
Azure Storage Explorer	GUI-based storage management
SDKs (Python, .NET, Java, Node.js)	Developer integration

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🔷 AWS Equivalent: Amazon S3

Feature	Azure Blob Storage	Amazon S3
Object Storage	✅	✅
Access Tiers	Hot, Cool, Archive	Standard, Intelligent-Tiering, Glacier
Blob/Object Types	Block, Append, Page	Standard Objects
CLI Tools	Azure CLI, PowerShell	AWS CLI
Lifecycle Management	✅	✅
Redundancy	LRS, ZRS, GRS, GZRS	Standard, One Zone-IA, Glacier
Versioning	✅	✅
Access Control	RBAC, SAS, ACLs	IAM, Bucket Policies
CI/CD Integration	Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions	CodePipeline, CodeBuild

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✅ Summary

Feature	Details
Service Name	Azure Blob Storage
Type	Object Storage for Unstructured Data
Primary Use Cases	Media hosting, backups, CI/CD artifacts, logging, analytics
DevOps Integration	Azure CLI, Azure DevOps, Jenkins, GitHub Actions, Storage Explorer
Tiers	Hot, Cool, Archive
Redundancy	LRS, ZRS, GRS, GZRS
Security	Encryption, RBAC, SAS, Private Endpoints, Immutable Storage
AWS Equivalent	Amazon S3