Microsoft’s object storage solution for the cloud is called Azure Blob Storage. Blob Storage is designed for storing large amounts of unstructured data, which is data that doesn’t adhere to any particular data model or definition, such as text or binary data.
Blob Storage is used for these purposes:
■ Serving images or documents directly to a browser
■ Storing data for analysis by an on- premises or Azure-h osted service.
■ Storing data for backup and restore, disaster recovery, and archiving
■ Storing files for distributed access
■ Streaming video and audio
■ Writing to log files
From anywhere in the world, your user and client apps can access objects in Blob Storage using the Internet (HTTP/HTTPS). Items in Blob Storage can be accessed using the Azure Storage REST API, Azure PowerShell, Azure CLI, or an Azure Storage client library. You can also connect to Blob Storage securely by using SSH File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) and mount Blob Storage containers by using the Network File System (NFS) 3.0 protocol.
Blob Storage offers three types of resources:
■ The storage account
■ A container in the storage account
■ A blob in a container
The storage account is a unique namespace in Azure for your data. Every object that you store in Azure Storage has an address that includes your unique account name. The combination of both the account name and the Blob Storage endpoint becomes the base address for the objects placed in your storage account. For example, if your storage account is named wpanekstorageaccount, then the default endpoint for your Blob Storage would be http://wpanekstorageaccount.blob.core.windows.net.
There are several different types of storage accounts that are supported for Blob Storage:
General- Purpose v2 This is a Standard storage account type for blobs, file shares, queues, and tables. This is the recommended storage type for most scenarios that use Blob Storage or another Azure Storage service.
Block Blob This is a Premium storage account type for block blobs and append blobs. This is the recommended storage type for scenarios with high transaction rates, that use smaller objects, or that requires low storage latency.
Page Blob This is a Premium storage account type for page blobs only. Page blobs are made up of 512- byte pages up to 8 TB in total size and are designed for frequent random read/write operations.
A container in the storage account organizes a set of blobs. It is similar to a directory in a filesystem but can contain an unlimited number of containers and store an unlimited number of blobs.
When naming a container, follow these rules:
■ Can be between 3 and 63 characters long
■ Must start with a letter or number, and can contain only lowercase letters, numbers, and the dash (- ) character
■ Cannot have two or more consecutive dash characters
A blob in a container can support three types of blobs: block blobs, append blobs, and page blobs. Block blobs store text and binary data. They consist of blocks of data that can be individually managed and can store up to approximately 190.7 tebibytes (TiB). Append blobs consist of blocks much like block blobs but are optimized for append operations. This type of blob is best used for scenarios such as logging data from virtual machines. Page blobs store random access files up to 8 TiB in size. Page blobs store virtual hard drive (VHD) files and serve as disks for Azure virtual machines. When naming a blob, follow these rules:
■ Can contain any combination of characters.
■ Must be at least one character long and cannot be more than 1,024 characters long.
They are also case- sensitive.
■ Reserved URL characters must be properly escaped.
■ Cannot exceed 254 path segments. A path segment is the string between consecutive delimiter characters (e.g., the forward slash, /) that corresponds to the name of a virtual directory. Microsoft notes that you should also avoid blob names that end with a dot (.), a forward slash (/), or a sequence or combination of the two. No path segments should end with a dot (.).
Using the Windows Admin Center to Create and Manage Failover Clusters
You can also use the Windows Admin Center to manage failover clusters. The Windows Admin Center is a locally deployed, browser- based app that is used to manage Windows servers, clusters, hyper- converged infrastructure, as well as Windows client computers. You can download the Windows Admin Center from Microsoft’s website at www .microsoft.com/en- us/evalcenter/download- windows-a dmin- center.
Using the Windows Admin Center, you can create failover clusters, as well as view and manage cluster resources, storage, network, nodes, roles, virtual machines, and virtual switches.
To add a cluster to Windows Admin Center, perform the following steps:
- Click + Add under All Connections.
- Choose to add server clusters.
- Type the name of the cluster and, if prompted, any required credentials. You will have the option to add the cluster nodes as individual server connections in Windows Admin Center.
- Click Add to finish. The new cluster will now be added to the connection list on the Overview page. To connect to the cluster, just click it.
PowerShell Commands for Clustering
For failover cluster connections, there are a number of tools available in the Windows Admin Center:
Overview Here you can view failover cluster details and manage cluster resources.
Disks Here you can view cluster shared disks and volumes.
Networks Here you can view networks in the cluster.
Nodes Here you can view and manage cluster nodes.
Roles Here you can manage cluster roles or create an empty role.
Updates Here you can manage Cluster- Aware Updates (requires CredSSP).
Virtual Machines Here you can view and manage virtual machines.
Virtual Switches Here you can view and manage virtual switches.
