Besides Cosmos DB, Microsoft Azure supports other non-relational data services. These services are optimized for more specific cases than a generalized document database store. In the sample scenario, Contoso wants to use Azure Blob Storage to store video and audio files, Azure Data Lake Storage to support large volumes of data, and Azure File Storage to create file shares. Now you'll learn how to provision Data Lake Storage, Blob storage, and File Storage. As with Cosmos DB, you can provision these services using the Azure portal, the Azure CLI, Azure PowerShell, and Azure Resource Manager templates, Data Lake Storage, Blob storage, and file storage all require that you first create an Azure storage account. Use the create storage account page to set up a new storage account using the Azure portal. On the basics tab, provide for the following details. Under subscription, select your Microsoft as your subscription and on the resource group, either select an existing resource group or create a new one as appropriate. In storage account name, note that as with a Cosmos DB account, each storage account must have a unique name that hasn't already been used by someone else. On the location, select the region that is nearest to you if you're in the process of developing a new application or the region nearest to your users if you're deploying an existing application. The performance setting has two options. Standard storage accounts are based on hard disks. They're the lowest cost of the two storage options but have higher latency. This type of storage account is suitable for applications that require bookstores that is accessed infrequently, such as archives. Premium storage uses solid-state drives on has much lower latency and better read-write performance than standard storage. Solid-state drives are best used for IO intensive applications such as databases. You can also use premium storage that hold Azure virtual machine disks. A premium storage account is more expensive than a standard account. It is important to note that Data Lake Storage is only available with a standard storage account, not premium. You will notice that on the account kind, Azure storage supports several different types of account. You can use general-purpose v2 storage account for blobs, files, queues, and tables and is recommended for most scenarios that require Azure storage. If you want to provision Azure Data Lake Storage, you should specify this account type. General-purpose v1 is a legacy account type for blobs, files, queues, and tables. Use general-purpose v2 accounts when possible. The other types of accounts are block blob storage, file storage, and blob storage. Block blob storage is only available for premium accounts. You can use this account type for block blobs and append blobs. It's recommended for scenarios with high transaction rates or they use smaller objects or require consistently low storage latency. File storage is also only available for premium accounts. You use it to create files only storage accounts with premium performance characteristics. It's recommended for enterprise or high-performance scale applications. Use this type if you're creating an account to support file storage. Blob storage is another legacy account type that can only hold blobs. Use general-purpose v2 accounts instead when possible. You can use this account type for Azure Data Lake Storage, but the general-purpose v2 account type is preferable. Data in an Azure storage account is always replicated three times in the region you specify as the primary location for the account. Azure storage offers two options for how your data is replicated in the primary region. Locally redundant storage, or LRS, copies your data synchronously three times within a single physical location in the region. LRS is the least expensive replication option, but isn't recommended for applications requiring high availability. Geo-redundant storage or GRS, copies your data synchronously three times within a single physical location in the primary region using LRS. It then copies your data asynchronously to a single physical location in the secondary region. This form of replication protects you against regional outages. Read-access geo-redundant storage or RA-GRS replication is an extension of GRS that provides direct read-only access to the data in the secondary location. In contrast, the GRS option doesn't expose the data in the secondary location and it's only used recover from a failure in the primary location. RA-GRS replication enables you to store a read-only copy of the data close to users that are located in a geographically distant location, helping to reduce read latency times. Zone redundant storage, or ZRS, replicates your Azure storage data synchronously across three Azure availability zones in the primary region. Each availability zone is a separate physical location with independent power, cooling, and networking. This is useful for applications requiring high availability. You should note that in order to maintain performance, premium storage accounts only support LRS replication. This is because replication is performed synchronously to maintain data integrity. Replicating data to a distant region can increase latency to the point at which any advantages of using premium storage are lost. The access tier option is only available for standard storage accounts. You can select between hot and cool. The hot access tier has higher storage costs than cool and archive tiers with the lowest access costs. Example usage scenarios for the hot access tier include; data that's an active use or expected to be accessed, read from and written to frequently, data that stage for processing and eventual migration to the cool access tier. The cool access tier has lower storage costs than higher access cost compared to hot storage. This tier is intended for data that will remain in the cool tier for at least 30 days. Example usage scenarios for the cool access tier include; short-term backup and disaster recovery datasets, older media content not viewed frequently anymore, but it's expected to be available immediately when accessed, large datasets that need to be stored cost-effectively while more data is being gathered for future processing. For example, long-term storage of scientific data or raw telemetry data from a manufacturing facility. If you're using the Azure CLI, run the AzStorageAccount command to create a new storage account. You have three options available. First, the sku is a combination of a performance tier and replication options. It can be one of premium LRS, premium ZRS, standard GRS, standard GZRS, standard LRS, standard RA-GRS, standard RA-GZRS, or standard CRS. Next, the kind parameter should be one of blob storage, block blob storage, file storage, storage, or storage v2. Finally, the access tier parameter can either be cool or hot. You use the new AzStorageAccount PowerShell commandlets to create a new storage account with the following parameters. Name, resource group name, location, sku name, kind, and access tier. The values for sku name, kind, and access tier are the same as those in the Azure CLI command.
