Implement and manage storage – AZ-104 Study Guide

Implementing and managing storage is one of the most important aspects of building or deploying a new solution using Azure. There are several services and features available for use, and each has its own place. Azure Storage is the underlying storage for most of the services in Azure. It provides service for the storage and retrieval of blobs and files, and it has services that are available for storing large volumes of data through tables. Azure Storage includes a fast and reliable messaging service for application developers with queues. This chapter reviews how to implement and manage storage with an emphasis on Azure storage accounts.

Skills covered in this chapter:

  • Skill 2.1 Configure access to storageSkill 
  • 2.2: Configure and manage storage accounts
  • Skill 2.3: Configure Azure Files and Azure Blob Storage

NOTE MICROSOFT EXAM OBJECTIVES

The sections in this chapter align with the objectives that are listed in the AZ-104 study guide from Microsoft. However, the sections are presented in an order that is designed to help you learn and do not directly match the order that is presented in the study guide. On the exam, questions will appear from different sections in a random order. For the full list of objectives, visit   https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/credentials/certifications/resources/study-guides/az-104.

Skill 2.1: Configure access to storage

An Azure storage account is a resource that you create that is used to store data objects such as blobs, files, queues, tables, and disks. Data in an Azure storage account is durable and highly available, secure, massively scalable, and accessible from anywhere in the world over HTTP or HTTPS.

This skill covers how to:

  • Create and configure storage accounts
  • Configure Azure Storage firewalls and virtual networks
  • Create and use shared access signature (SAS) tokens
  • Configure stored access policies
  • Manage access keys
  • Configure identity-based access

Create and configure storage accounts

Azure storage accounts provide a cloud-based storage service that is highly scalable, available, performant, and durable. Within each storage account, a number of separate storage services are provided:

  • Blobs Provides a highly scalable service for storing arbitrary data objects such as text

or binary data.

  • Tables Provides a NoSQL-style store for storing structured data. Unlike a relational database, tables in Azure Storage do not require a fixed schema, so different entries in the same table can have different fields.
  • Queues Provides reliable message queueing between application components.
  • Files Provides managed file shares that can be used by Azure VMs or on-premises servers.
  • Disks Provides a persistent storage volume for Azure VM that can be attached as a virtual hard disk.

There are three types of storage blobs: block blobs, append blobs, and page blobs. Page blobs are generally used to store VHD files when deploying unmanaged disks. (Unmanaged disks are an older disk storage technology for Azure virtual machines. Managed disks are recommended for new deployments.)

When creating a storage account, there are several options that must be set: Performance Tier, Account Kind, Replication Option, and Access Tier. There are some interactions between these settings. For example, only the Standard performance tier allows you to choose the access tier. The following sections describe each of these settings. We then describe how to create storage accounts using the Azure portal, PowerShell, and Azure CLI.