Quick Bites:
- Microsoft Azure offers multiple options for customers to store data, including Azure Blob storage, Azure File storage, Azure Queues, Azure Tables, and Azure Disks
- Azure Blob storage is designed to store massive amounts of unstructured data that can be accessed from anywhere and is recommended for scenarios such as media streaming, serving documents to a browser, maintaining logs and storing data for big data analytics
- Azure File storage provides a distributed file system and allows files to be accessed from anywhere in the world using a URL that includes a Shared Access Signature (SAS) token
- Use cases for Azure File storage are more straightforward than those of Azure Blob storage, as it essentially functions as a file server
- Both Azure Blob storage and Azure File storage are valuable options for storing data in Microsoft Azure, and the choice between them will depend on the specific use case
No one will contradict the statement that cloud services are now leveraged by most organizations using one provider or another (or several given the current trends towards multi-cloud). While storage has always been one of the most critical and highly technical topics with respect to on-premise datacenters, it is equally important when dealing with data in Microsoft Azure or any cloud provider for that matter. In which case, offering multiple options to store data will address a large number of use cases for different budget levels which may be the deciding factor for a customer when evaluating several cloud providers.
With that in mind, it gets confusing and it can prove quite tricky to figure out which type of storage to go for in a specific instance. Microsoft Azure offers several offerings for customers to store data. These will differentiate from each according to the use case driving their usage.
- Azure Blob storage: A highly scalable object store for storing massive amounts of unstructured data
- Azure File storage: Managed file shares usable by cloud and on-premises environments
- Azure Queues: A messaging store messaging between applications to create a backlog of work to process asynchronously
- Azure Tables: A NoSQL store for schema-less storage of structured flexible data using a lot of metadata
- Azure Disks: Block-level storage volumes for Azure VMs. Traditional virtual disks if you wish
Now with all that said, in this article we will have a look at the first two options, Azure Blob storage vs Azure File storage.
Unstructured data vs structured data
In order to understand Azure Blob storage, it is best to understand the term “unstructured data” first as it is the crux of this storage type. Note that the majority of data generated by organizations is unstructured with growing volumes. But first, let’s start with MongoDB’s definition of it.
“Unstructured data is information that is not arranged according to a pre-set data model or schema, and therefore cannot be stored in a traditional relational database or RDBMS.”
Now if you aren’t familiar with this space, this definition won’t help much in understanding and this is completely normal. Let’s take a look at it from a different perspective.
Structured data (sometimes referred to as quantitative data) refers to data that is well organized and can be easily manipulated, the kind of data that would look good in an Excel spreadsheet. A good example is a relational database (RDBMS) where the data gets stored in an organized way like names, birth dates, bank account numbers, you name it. SQL language (meaning Structured Query Language by the way) can then be used to query that data.
On the other hand, unstructured data (also called qualitative data) is pretty much everything else you can think of stored in its native format (emails, media, CMS, sensor data…). It has its own internal structure and metadata but is not structured following data models or schema-like structured data (think data lakes). Take the example of a bunch of snapshots taken from satellite imagery showing scans of underground gas or oil reserves (just making this up), this is completely unstructured as it’s a bunch of pictures but they hold a lot of value, making them hard to process but important for customers.
Now, as you can see, the “versus” is about weighing the differences and not which one is better as they apply to completely different use cases and both are used by most organizations.
Azure Blob storage
We talked about data structure because this is what Azure Blob storage is all about. Azure Blob is optimized to store massive amounts of unstructured data. Azure Blob storage is recommended in cases when the app supports streaming and random access, if the data must be accessed from anywhere or in data lakes and big data analytics scenarios. Such use cases include serving documents to a browser, writing logs, media streaming, storing data to analyze and so on.
Another use case for Azure Blob storage is the backup and restore, disaster recovery, and archiving activities. For instance, BDRSuite v5.3 supports Azure Blob storage as a backup repository, making for an affordable and offsite storage solution for your data. The point of Azure Blob storage is that it is a highly available low-cost tiered storage, making it a good offsite backup repository.
Azure Blobs are set up in different resource types. An Azure storage account (Namespace in Azure) can contain multiple containers, which can themselves contain multiple Blobs. Blobs can be of different types:
- Block blobs: Text and binary data that can be managed individually up to about 190.7 TiB
- Append blobs: Similar to block blobs, except they are optimized for append operations such as logging data from virtual machines
- Page blobs: Virtual hard drive (VHD) files for Azure virtual machines. Random access files up to 8 TiB in size
Azure File storage
As opposed to Azure Blobs which stored large amounts of unstructured data, Azure File storage refers to a more traditional type of storage offering a distributed file system. As the name suggests, Azure Files storage provides file shares to mount on any compatible operating system, think SMB for Windows, Linux and MacOS and NFS for Linux and MacOS. The Azure Files REST API also offers the possibility to access files programmatically through the FileREST API via http/https.
Azure Files storage differs from your traditional on-premise file servers in that the files can be accessed from anywhere in the world using the URL that points to the file which includes the Shared Access Signature (SAS) token to allow specific access with a time limit.
Use cases for this service should be a lot more straightforward to grasp than those of Blobs since it is essentially a file server. It can be used to migrate on-premise applications to Azure, access files from multiple virtual machines, use as Kubernetes persistent volumes (PVCD) or simply replace on-premise file servers since it is fully managed.
Wrap up
Now, you may still not be clear on the difference between the two storage types and it is normal. Choosing one or the other will mostly depend on use cases. While Azure File can be used as well, Azure Blob will probably be better suited when you need to store large amounts of data or access it programmatically as it will provide the lower cost option. Azure File storage will help in migration scenarios or in replacing traditional file servers.
Don’t worry if you haven’t fully grasped everything about Azure Blob storage as it is still a fairly new concept in the IT landscape and choosing the right storage type for a specific use case is a lot less obvious than people would think. You can refer to the official documentation to learn more about different Azure storage types.
Check out our Azure series for Beginners here: Microsoft Azure for Beginners: What are Update Domains and Availability zones in Azure – Part 10
Related Posts:
Overview of Azure Blob Backup
The Ultimate Guide to Amazon S3 and S3 Compatible Object Storage
Amazon S3 vs Azure Blob Storage – Comparison
What are the Difference between EBS vs EFS vs FSx vs S3
Follow our Twitter and Facebook feeds for new releases, updates, insightful posts and more.
