Azure Storage Lecture Review

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering Azure Storage terminology, including account types, redundancy, access tiers, and security features as discussed in the lecture.

Azure Storage

Azure’s cloud service for storing files, objects, messages, and structured NoSQL data.

Storage Account

A container that provides a unique namespace for Azure Storage services, including blobs, files, queues, and tables.

General-Purpose v2 Storage Account

The recommended standard storage account type for most workloads. It supports Blob Storage, Azure Files, queues, tables, access tiers, lifecycle management, and modern redundancy options.

Storage Account Name

A globally unique name between $3$ and $24$ characters that can contain only lowercase letters and numbers.

Storage Account Endpoint

The URL applications use to access a storage service, such as Blob Storage or Azure Files.

Blob Storage

Object storage used for large amounts of unstructured data, such as images, videos, backups, documents, and log files.

Blob Container

A logical grouping of blobs inside a storage account. A container is similar to a folder, but containers cannot be nested inside other containers.

Block Blob

The most common blob type. It is designed for files such as images, documents, videos, backups, and logs.

Append Blob

A blob optimized for data that is continually added to the end, such as application or diagnostic logs.

Page Blob

A collection of $512$-byte pages optimized for frequent random read-and-write operations. Azure virtual machine disks use page blobs.

Azure Files

A managed cloud file-sharing service that can be accessed through SMB or NFS.

Azure File Share

A shared folder hosted in Azure Files that can be mounted by Windows, Linux, and macOS systems.

SMB

Server Message Block. A file-sharing protocol commonly used by Windows computers to access network file shares.

NFS

Network File System. A file-sharing protocol commonly used by Linux and Unix-based systems.

Azure Queue Storage

A service used to store large numbers of messages that applications can process asynchronously.

Azure Table Storage

A NoSQL key-value storage service for large amounts of structured, non-relational data.

Locally Redundant Storage — LRS

Maintains three copies of data within one physical location in the primary Azure region. It is the lowest-cost redundancy option.

Zone-Redundant Storage — ZRS

Maintains copies of data across three availability zones in the primary region. It protects against the failure of one datacenter or availability zone.

Geo-Redundant Storage — GRS

Copies data within the primary region using LRS and asynchronously copies it to a secondary Azure region.

Read-Access Geo-Redundant Storage — RA-GRS

Provides the same regional replication as GRS but also allows read-only access to the secondary region before a failover.

Geo-Zone-Redundant Storage — GZRS

Uses ZRS across availability zones in the primary region and asynchronously replicates data to a secondary region.

Read-Access Geo-Zone-Redundant Storage — RA-GZRS

Provides GZRS protection and allows read-only access to data in the secondary region before failover.

Storage Account Failover

The process of changing the secondary region of a geo-redundant storage account into the new primary region during a regional outage.

Hot Access Tier

An online Blob Storage tier intended for data that is accessed frequently. It has higher storage costs but lower access costs.

Cool Access Tier

An online Blob Storage tier intended for data that is accessed infrequently but still needs immediate availability.

Cold Access Tier

An online Blob Storage tier intended for data that is rarely accessed but must remain immediately available. It has lower storage costs and higher retrieval costs than Cool.

Archive Access Tier

An offline Blob Storage tier for rarely accessed, long-term data. It requires data to be rehydrated before it can be read.

Blob Rehydration

The process of moving an archived blob back into an online tier, such as Hot or Cool, so it can be accessed.

Lifecycle Management

A rule-based feature that automatically moves blobs between access tiers or deletes them based on conditions such as age or last modification date.

Blob Versioning

A feature that automatically keeps previous versions of a blob whenever the blob is modified or deleted.

Blob Soft Delete

A data-protection feature that retains deleted blobs for a configured period so they can be restored.

Blob Snapshot

A read-only copy of a blob captured at a specific point in time.

Shared Access Signature — SAS

A signed URL that provides limited access to storage resources without exposing the storage account key.

User Delegation SAS

A Blob Storage SAS token secured with Microsoft Entra credentials instead of the storage account key.

Storage Account Access Key

A highly privileged key providing broad access. Each storage account has two keys so one can be rotated while the other remains active.

Access-Key Rotation

The practice of replacing storage account access keys regularly. Two keys allow applications to continue working while one key is regenerated.

Microsoft Entra Authorization

An identity-based authorization method that uses Microsoft Entra identities and Azure RBAC instead of storage account keys.

Azure RBAC for Storage

Role-based access control used to assign storage data permissions to users, groups, service principals, and managed identities.

Private Endpoint

A network interface with a private IP address from a virtual network that provides private access to a specific Azure Storage service through Azure Private Link.

Infrastructure Encryption

An optional second layer of encryption that encrypts storage data twice using separate encryption algorithms and keys.

AzCopy

A command-line utility designed for high-performance copying of data into, out of, or between Azure storage accounts.

Cloud Tiering

An Azure File Sync feature that keeps frequently accessed files locally while replacing less-used files with pointers to the copies stored in Azure.

Legal Hold

An immutability setting that protects blob data from modification or deletion until the hold is explicitly removed.

Hierarchical Namespace

A storage account feature that organizes Blob Storage data into directories and enables Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 capabilities.

Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2

Analytics-focused storage built on Azure Blob Storage that adds a hierarchical directory structure and fine-grained access control.