Describe Azure storage services

Question 1

What is the purpose of an azure storage account?

Answer 1

Provides a unique namespace for your Azure Storage data that’s over HTTP/HTTPS.

Question 2

What are the 5 types of storage accounts?

Answer 2

Standard; Premium block blobs; Premium file shares; Premium page blobs.

Question 3

Define the purpose of a ‘standard’ azure storage account

Answer 3

For blobs, file shares, queues, and tables; Recommended for most scenarios using Azure Storage.

Question 4

Define the purpose of a ‘Premium block blobs’ azure storage account

Answer 4

For blob storage; Recommended for scenarios with high transaction rates, use smaller objects, or require consistently low storage latency.

Question 5

Define the purpose of a ‘Premium file shares’ azure storage account

Answer 5

For file shares only; Recommended for enterprise or high-performance scale applications that supports SMB and NFS.

Question 6

Define the purpose of a ‘Premium page blobs’ azure storage account

Answer 6

Premium storage account type for page blobs only.

Question 7

How does azure offer redundancy to all Azure storage accounts?

Answer 7

Data in an Azure Storage account is always replicated three times in the primary region.

Question 8

What are the two ways Azure storage determines how data is replicated in the primary region of a storage resource?

Answer 8

Locally redundant storage (LRS) and Zone-redundant storage (ZRS).

Question 9

Define ‘Locally redundant storage (LRS)’

Answer 9

Lowest-cost redundancy option; Replicates your data three times within a single data center in the primary region; provides at least 11 nines of durability.

Question 10

Define ‘Zone-redundant storage’

Answer 10

Replicates your Azure Storage data synchronously across three Azure availability zones in the primary region; Provides at least 12 nines of durability.

Question 11

Is data in Zone-redundant storage accessible if a zone becomes unavailable?

Answer 11

Data is still accessible for both read and write operations even if a zone becomes unavailable.

Question 12

What replication service is best suited to meet governance requirements?

Answer 12

Zone-redundant storage

Question 13

What replication service is best suited for high availability applications?

Answer 13

Zone-redundant storage

Question 14

How can using a secondary region support high availability?

Answer 14

If the data in a storage account is copied to a secondary region, the data is available if a catastrophic failure affects data in the primary region.

Question 15

When configuring a secondary region for a storage account, how is the secondary region chosen?

Answer 15

The secondary region is based on Azure region pairs, and can’t be changed.

Question 16

What are the two options Azure Storage offers for copying data to a secondary region to protect against regional outages?

Answer 16

geo-redundant storage (GRS) and geo-zone-redundant storage (GZRS).

Question 17

Is data in a secondary region accessible?

Answer 17

By default, data in the secondary region isn’t available for read or write access unless there’s a failover to the secondary region.

Question 18

Define ‘geo-redundant storage (GRS)’

Answer 18

GRS offers durability for Azure Storage data objects of at least 16 nines over a given year.

Question 19

How does geo-redundant storage (GRS) function?

Answer 19

1. GRS copies data synchronously three times within a single physical location in the primary region using LRS.
2. Copies your data asynchronously to a single physical location in the secondary region (the region pair) using LRS.

Question 20

Because data is replicated to the region pair asynchronously, what are concerns of data transfer?

Answer 20

A failure that affects the primary region may result in data loss if the primary region can’t be recovered.

Question 21

What is the Azure Storage recovery point objective (RPO)?

Answer 21

The interval between the most recent writes to the primary region and the last write to the secondary region and indicates the point in time to which data can be recovered; Azure Storage typically has an RPO of less than 15 minutes.

Question 22

Define ‘geo-zone-redundant storage (GZRS)’

Answer 22

GZRS is designed to provide at least 16 nines of durability of objects over a given year.

Question 23

How does geo-zone-redundant storage (GZRS) function?

Answer 23

1. Data in a GZRS storage account is copied across three Azure availability zones in the primary region.
2. Replicated to a secondary geographic region, using LRS, for protection from regional disasters.

Question 24

Can read/write access be enabled for a secondary region?

Answer 24

Yes, Enable read-access geo-redundant storage (RA-GRS) or read-access geo-zone-redundant storage (RA-GZRS).

Question 25

Define an ‘Azure Blob’ storage

Answer 25

An object storage solution for the cloud that can store massive amounts of data.

Question 26

What type of data can an azure blob store?

Answer 26

Blob storage is unstructured, meaning that there are no restrictions on the kinds of data or file formats it can hold.

Question 27

How can objects in blob storage be accessed?

Answer 27

Anywhere via HTTP(s) using URLs, APIs, Azure PowerShell/CLI.

Question 28

To save cost on storage, how should data be organized?

Answer 28

Based on attributes like frequency of access and planned retention period.