Day 14: Microsoft Module Core Cloud Services - Azure data storage options

What I learned today on this module,

Here are some of the important benefits of Azure data storage:

• Automated backup and recovery: mitigates the risk of losing your data if there is any unforeseen failure or interruption.
• Replication across the globe: copies your data to protect it against any planned or unplanned events, such as scheduled maintenance or hardware failures. You can choose to replicate your data at multiple locations across the globe.
• Support for data analytics: supports performing analytics on your data consumption.
• Encryption capabilities: data is encrypted to make it highly secure; you also have tight control over who can access the data.
• Multiple data types: Azure can store almost any type of data you need. It can handle video files, text files, and even large binary files like virtual hard disks. It also has many options for your relational and NoSQL data.
• Data storage in virtual disks: Azure also has the capability of storing up to 32 TB of data in its virtual disks. This capability is significant when you're storing heavy data such as videos and simulations.
• Storage tiers: storage tiers to prioritize access to data based on frequently used versus rarely used information.

There are three primary types of data that Azure Storage is designed to hold.

1. Structured data : SQL
2. Semi-structured data : NoSQL
3. Unstructured data : JPG, PDF, JSON, etc. 

Knowledge check:

1. Suppose you work at a startup with limited funding. Why might you prefer Azure data storage over an on-premises solution?

• To ensure you run on a specific brand of hardware, which will let you form a marketing partnership with that hardware vendor.
• The Azure pay-as-you-go billing model lets you avoid buying expensive hardware.

There are no large, up-front capital expenditures (CapEx) with Azure. You pay monthly for only the services you use (OpEx).

• To get exact control over the location of your data store.

2. Which of the following situations would yield the most benefits from relocating an on-premises data store to Azure?

• Unpredictable storage demand that increases and decreases multiple times throughout the year.

Azure data storage is flexible. You can quickly and easily add or remove capacity. You can increase performance to handle spikes in load or decrease performance to reduce costs. In all cases, you pay for only what you use.

• Long-term, steady growth in storage demand.
• Consistent, unchanging storage demand.

3. A newly released mobile app using Azure data storage has just been mentioned by a celebrity on social media, seeing a huge spike in user volume. To meet the unexpected new user demand, what feature of pay-as-you-go storage will be most beneficial?

• The ability to provision and deploy new infrastructure quickly

As the user demand increases, the agility to deploy new servers or services as needed can help scale to meet the increased user load.

• The ability to predict the service costs in advance
• The ability to meet compliance requirements for data storage