Microsoft Azure Storage and Database Part 27 – Difference Between Azure Blog Storage And Azure File Storage

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Hope you all are doing good !!! 🙂 .
In our previous articles we have discussed How To Configure Azure File Sync. With the previous articles, we are going to press the pause button to our journey with Blob and File storage. We will see those topics later if there is any new feature added to those services. Today in this article we will talk about the differences between Blob Storage and File Storage.
Tool Installation Articles :
- Configure Azure Command Line Interface ( Azure CLI) On Windows
- Configure PowerShell For Microsoft Azure Az Module On Windows
Previous Azure Series :
- Learn Basics Of Azure Networking In 60 Hours
- Learn Basic Of Azure Active Directory And Azure Identity And Access Management
- Azure DevOps – Learn at one place
If you have missed our previous articles on Azure Storage and Database Series, please check it in following links.
Part 1 – Overview Of Azure Storage and Database
Part 2 – Azure Storage Account
Part 4 – Work With Azure Blob Storage
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Part 21 – Azure File Service – Create And Manage File Share Snapshots Using PowerShell
Part 22 – Azure File Service – Configure Azure File Share Back Up Using PowerShell
Part 23 – Azure File Service – Restore Azure Files From Back Up Using PowerShell
Part 24 – Azure File Service – Storage Sync Service
Part 25 – Azure File Service – Storage Sync Service – Configure Azure File Sync – 1
Part 26 – Azure File Service – Storage Sync Service – Configure Azure File Sync – 2
Next Article : Part 28 – Azure Queue Storage – Overview
Azure Storage
Azure Storage is a Microsoft-managed cloud service that provides storage that is highly available, secure, durable, scalable and redundant. Within Azure there are two types of storage accounts, four types of storage, four levels of data redundancy and three tiers for storing files.
Microsoft offers several options to store data on the cloud. Each option has its unique purpose for serving different business needs. One of the significant capabilities that Microsoft Azure provides is the agility to migrate to different storage options if required.
There are following options available in the Azure Storage Account for storing user data.
- Blob Storage
- File Storage
- Table Storage
- Queue Storage
- Disk
Basic Different Between Azure File Storage And Azure Blob Storage
Azure Files:
Azure Files offer fully managed File shares in the cloud that are accessible via the industry-standard SMB. Azure File shares can be mounted concurrently by cloud or on-premises deployments of Windows, Linux, and macOS. It can be cached on Windows servers with Azure File Sync for faster access. Provides a SMB 3.0 interface in addition to the REST interface to provide access to files. The SMB interface enables applications running in the cloud to use native file system APIs to read and write from files. It is more costly and Azure File Storage may be mounted as an SMB volume
A file share is ideal for:
- Lifting & shifting applications to the cloud which already use native file system APIs to share data between pieces of the applications
- Storing development and debugging tools that need to be accessed from many cloud instances
- Applications that want REST access to data from anywhere and SMB access to data from within the region the storage account is located in
Azure Blobs :
Azure Blob Storage is an object storage solution for the cloud. Blob Storage allows you to store a massive amount of unstructured data. The unstructured data need not be of the specific data model. Provides a REST interface for massively scale out object storage. It is more costly and Azure File Storage may be mounted as an SMB volume
Blob storage is ideal for:
- Serving images or documents directly to a browser.
- Storing files for distributed access.
- Streaming video and audio.
- Storing data for backup and restore, disaster recovery, and archiving.
- Storing data for analysis by an on-premises or Azure-hosted service.
Scalability
It is significant to know the quota and limits of Azure Storage to choose the right option. The highest level of representation for capacity in Azure Blob Storage is Containers, whereas for Files is Shares.
Limitations To Blob Storage
Resource | Type of Blob | Limit |
Maximum size of single blob container | 5 PB | |
Maximum number of blocks | Block / Append | 50,000 |
Maximum block size | Block | 100 MB |
Maximum total block size | Append | 4 MiB |
Maximum total blob size | Block | Approx. 4.75 TB |
Maximum total blob size | Append | Approximately 195 GB |
Maximum total blob size | Page | 8 TB |
Maximum stored access policies per container | All | 5 |
Target request rate for blob | All | 500/second |
Target throughput for blob | Page | 60 MB/s |
Target throughput for blob | Block | Depends on storage account ingress/egress limits |
Limitations File Shares
Resource | Standard file shares | Premium file shares |
Minimum share size | N/A | 100 GB |
Maximum share size | 5 TB by default, can be increased up to 100TB | 100 TB |
Maximum file size | 1 TB | 4 TB |
Maximum IOPS | 1,000 IOPS* | 100,000 IOPS |
Maximum stored access policies** | 5 | 5 |
Target throughput** | 60 MB/sec** | Ingress 4,136 MB/sEgress 6,204 MB/s |
Maximum number of share snapshots | 200 | 200 |
Maximum directory/file name length (chars) | 2,048 | 2,048 |
Maximum hard links | N/A | 178 |
Security
Azure Blob storage | Azure File Storage |
Support Data Encryption (In Rest and Transfer) | Support Data Encryption (In Rest and Transfer) |
Support Shared Access Signature (SAS) | Support Shared Access Signature (SAS) |
Azure Blobs allow achieving encryption by BlobEncryptionPolicy class with Azure Key Vault | Azure Files use built-in encryption in the SMB 3.0 protocol or Network File System (NFS) protocol |
Support CORS (Cross-Origin Resource Sharing) rule | Support CORS (Cross-Origin Resource Sharing) rule |
Support to restrict the access by providing IP and V-Net | Support to restrict the access by providing IP and V-Net |
Disaster Recovery
Azure Blob storage | Azure File Storage |
Support Soft Delete | Support Soft Delete |
Use Copy Blob to asynchronously copy your Blob to destination Storage Account. | Use Copy File to asynchronously copy File share to destination Storage Account. |
Can be restored from backup | Can be restored from backup |
Pricing
Pricing described here is based on the Microsoft documentation as per current date.
Data Storage Prices
Following are the prices for storing data in Azure File and Blob Storage
Blob Storage | PREMIUM | HOT | COOL | ARCHIVE |
---|---|---|---|---|
First 50 terabyte (TB) / month | $0.18 per GB | $0.022 per GB | $0.01 per GB | $0.00099 per GB |
Next 450 TB / Month | $0.18 per GB | $0.0212 per GB | $0.01 per GB | $0.00099 per GB |
Over 500 TB / Month | $0.18 per GB | $0.0203 per GB | $0.01 per GB | $0.00099 per GB |
File Storage | STANDARD |
---|---|
GB/month | $0.06 per used GB |
Snapshots GB/month | $0.06 per used GB |
Operations and Data Transfer prices
Following are the prices for Operations and Data Transfering in Azure File and Blob Storage
Blob Storage | PREMIUM | HOT | COOL | ARCHIVE |
---|---|---|---|---|
Write operations (per 10,000)1 | $0.021 | $0.05 | $0.10 | $0.11 |
List and Create Container Operations (per 10,000)2 | $0.06 | $0.05 | $0.05 | $0.05 |
Read operations (per 10,000)3 Archive High Priority Read (per 10,000)5 | $0.0017 | $0.004 | $0.01 | $5.50 $30 |
All other Operations (per 10,000), except Delete, which is free | $0.0017 | $0.004 | $0.004 | $0.004 |
Data Retrieval (per GB)4 Archive High Priority Retrieval (per GB)5 | Free | Free | $0.01 | $0.022 $0.06 |
Data Write (per GB)4 | Free | Free | $0.0025 | Free |
File Storage | STANDARD |
---|---|
Put, Create Container Operations (per 10,000) | $0.015 |
List Operations (per 10,000) | $0.015 |
All other operations except Delete, which is free (per 10,000) | $0.0015 |
Geo-Replication Data Transfer (per GiB) | N/A |
There are individual aspects to be considered before concluding the best option between Azure Blob Storage and Files. Taking the common functionalities into consideration, I would prefer Azure Blob Storage rather than Files if there is not special requirement.
With the above information, I am concluding this article. I hope this is informative to you. Please let me know if I missed anything important or if my understanding is not up to the mark. Keep reading, share your thoughts, experiences. Feel free to contact us to discuss more.
Next Article : Part 28 – Azure Queue Storage – Overview
If you have any suggestion / feedback / doubt, you are most welcome. Stay tuned on Knowledge-Junction, will come up with more such articles.
Thanks for reading 🙂 .
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