File storage
File storage provides serverless Server Message Block (SMB) file shares. These are highly available, fully managed network file shares that can be accessed using the traditional SMB protocol and accessed from anywhere, over port 445.
It provides a traditional mapped drives storage solution to servers or Windows 10 in a lift-and-shift format.
This section looked at file storage. In the next section, we will look at container (Blob) storage.
Container (Blob) storage
Container storage provides massive-scale, cost-effective storage for unstructured data such as text, video, photos, files, and more.
Containers are used to store binary large object (Blob) data objects. For example, the following three forms of Blob data can be stored in a container:
- Page Blob: Used to hold random access files such as objects that have been randomly written and read, with no order. An example would be VM disks (managed disks are stored in Microsoft storage accounts).
- Block Blob: Used to hold text or binary files, such as objects that have been ordered, are consecutive, and not random. An example would be backups.
- Append Blob: Used for logging information, such as objects that have been consecutively added to the last piece of information stored in the Blob. An example would be log files.
This section looked at container storage. In the next section, we will look at the Azure database services.
Azure database services
Database services are one of the core building block services we will be looking at in this chapter.
You must understand the following database services since they are outlined in the Describe Core Azure Services exam:
- Azure SQL Managed Instance (Azure SQL MI): An Azure-hosted Microsoft SQL Server instance, fully managed as a PaaS service
- Azure SQL Database: An Azure-hosted relational database service built on the Microsoft SQL Server database engine; provides single database instances
- Azure Database for MySQL: An Azure-hosted relational database service built on the MySQL Community Edition database engine
- Azure Database for PostgreSQL: An Azure-hosted relational database service built on the Postgres database engine
- Cosmos DB: A NoSQL globally distributed, elastic, and scalable database service
This section introduced the core database services that can be used to build a data-driven solution in Azure. In the next section, we will look at Azure SQL MI.