| title | description | services | author | ms.service | ms.topic | ms.date | ms.author | ms.component |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Introduction to Blob storage - Object storage in Azure |
Azure Blob storage stores massive amounts of unstructured object data, such as text or binary data. Azure Blob storage is highly scalable and available. Clients can access data objects in Blob storage from PowerShell or Azure CLI, programmatically via Azure Storage client libraries, or using REST. |
storage |
tamram |
storage |
overview |
11/19/2018 |
tamram |
blobs |
[!INCLUDE storage-blob-concepts-include]
Blob storage offers three types of resources:
- The storage account.
- A container in the storage account
- A blob in a container
The following diagram shows the relationship between these resources.
A storage account provides 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 the account name and the Azure Storage service endpoint forms the endpoints for your storage account.
For example, if your storage account is named mystorageaccount, then the default endpoint for Blob storage is:
http://mystorageaccount.blob.core.windows.net
To create a storage account, see Create a storage account. To learn more about storage accounts, see Azure storage account overview.
A container organizes a set of blobs, similar to a directory in a file system. A storage account can include an unlimited number of containers, and a container can store an unlimited number of blobs.
Note
The container name must be lowercase. For more information about naming containers, see Naming and Referencing Containers, Blobs, and Metadata.
Azure Storage supports three types of blobs:
- Block blobs store text and binary data, up to about 4.7 TB. Block blobs are made up of blocks of data that can be managed individually.
- Append blobs are made up of blocks like block blobs, but are optimized for append operations. Append blobs are ideal for scenarios such as logging data from virtual machines.
- Page blobs store random access files up to 8 TB in size. Page blobs store the virtual hard drive (VHD) files serve as disks for Azure virtual machines. Fore more information about page blobs, see (../articles/storage/blobs/storage-blob-pageblob-overview.md)
For more information about the different types of blobs, see Understanding Block Blobs, Append Blobs, and Page Blobs.
A number of solutions exist for migrating existing data to Blob storage:
- AzCopy is an easy-to-use command-line tool for Windows and Linux that copies data to and from Blob storage, across containers, or across storage accounts. For more information about AzCopy, see Transfer data with the AzCopy v10 (Preview).
- The Azure Storage Data Movement library is a .NET library for moving data between Azure Storage services. The AzCopy utility is built with the Data Movement library. For more information, see the reference documentation for the Data Movement library.
- Azure Data Factory supports copying data to and from Blob storage by using the account key, shared access signature, service principal, or managed identities for Azure resources authentications. For more information, see Copy data to or from Azure Blob storage by using Azure Data Factory.
- Blobfuse is a virtual file system driver for Azure Blob storage. You can use blobfuse to access your existing block blob data in your Storage account through the Linux file system. For more information, see How to mount Blob storage as a file system with blobfuse.
- Azure Data Box Disk is a service for transferring on-premises data to Blob storage when large datasets or network constraints make uploading data over the wire unrealistic. You can use Azure Data Box Disk to request solid-state disks (SSDs) from Microsoft. You can then copy your data to those disks and ship them back to Microsoft to be uploaded into Blob storage.
- The Azure Import/Export service provides a way to export large amounts of data from your storage account to hard drives that you provide and that Microsoft then ships back to you with your data. For more information, see Use the Microsoft Azure Import/Export service to transfer data to Blob storage.