Microsoft Azure IaaS Solutions

Chapter 3. Azure Storage for Virtual Machines

As the Microsoft Azure environment has evolved, so have the storage offerings. Storage is divided by types of storage and performance.

Tip

On-premises and cloud storage use different requirements that can make cloud storage appear confusing. The number of choices and flexibility of Azure storage will prove to be an advantage as you become more comfortable with the platform.

Storage types include Storage Accounts or Managed Disks, each of which offers different performance tiers and service offerings around replication, resiliency, and other features.

In this chapter we explore the basics of Azure Storage, including storage tiers, features, resiliency options, and capabilities for storage attached to your Azure Virtual Machines infrastructure. You will also learn important deployment patterns and replication options to increase the availability and recoverability of your Azure Storage workloads.

Storage Accounts

Azure provides storage options for many workloads, from VMs to object storage and everything in between. Azure Storage comes in many types that span legacy compute support and can include other services across the entire Azure family.

You use storage accounts to manage groups of storage objects. These storage options can include different tiers of performance, as well. Deploying an Azure VM with traditional unmanaged disks requires a storage account to hold the virtual hard disks (VHDs). These are stored as Binary Large OBjects ...