This presentation discusses Windows Azure Blob Storage, covering from the Windows Azure Storage Overview, Blob Storage Basic Concept, Blob Storage Advanced, and finally the Tip of the day.
1. WINDOWS AZURE
BLOB STORAGE
DEEP DIVE
Wely Lau (wely@ncs.com.sg)
Microsoft MVP, Windows Azure
Solutions Architect, NCS Pte Ltd
Blog : http://wely-lau.net
2. AGENDA
• Windows Azure Storage Overview (10 mins)
• Blob Storage Basic (15 mins)
• Understanding container and blob
• Main web service operations
• Metadata
• Snapshot
• Deep Dive (20 mins)
• Block blob &page blob
• Shared Access Signature
• Content Delivery Network
• Tip of the day (10 mins)
• Q & A (5 mins)
4. WINDOWS AZURE STORAGE
• Storage in the Cloud
• Highly available with 99.9% monthly SLA
• Anywhere at anytime access
• Data Redundancy
• Data is replicated for resilience and protection with 3 copies within the same data center.
• Another 3 copies geo-replicated in another data center
• Cost effective
• Storage capacity: $ 0.14 per GB per month
• Storage transaction: $ 0.01 per 10,000 transaction
• User specified globally unique account name
• Can choose geo-location to host storage account
• US – “North Central” and “South Central”
• Europe – “North” and “West”
• Asia – “East” and “Southeast”
• Can co-locate storage account with compute account
• Explicitly or using affinity groups
• Some Facts
• 70 Petabytes raw storage today
• Grows to >200 Petabytes by start of 2012
6. STORAGE EMULATOR
• Provides a local “Mock” storage
• Emulates storage in cloud
• Allows offline development
• Requires SQL Express 2005/2008 or above
There are some differences between Cloud and Dev Storage.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/dd320275
7. ACCESSING WINDOWS AZURE STORAGE
VIA API
• REST-based Web Service
• Platform independent Developers…
• Use when a library isn‟t available
• Lacks Intellisense
• Results in opaque code
.NET Java PHP etc...
• Storage Client Libraries REST-based API
• .NET, Java, Python, Ruby, PHP, Perl, Jav Windows Azure Storage
aScript (Node), Objective-C, etc.
• More at http://tinyurl.com/was-library
• These provide an abstraction layer on
top of the REST API and is the most
common way to access storage.
8. ACCESSING WINDOWS AZURE STORAGE VIA
TOOLS
• Cloud Storage Studio by Cerebrata
• Azure Storage Explorer by Neudistic
• CloudXplorer by ClumsyLeaf
• CloudBerry Explorer by CloudBerry Lab
• More at http://tinyurl.com/was-explorers
11. WINDOWS AZURE BLOB STORAGE
• You can have as many containers and BLOBs as
you want.
• Containers can be created/destroyed on the fly
http://<account>.blob.core.windows.net/<container>/<blobname>
http://cohowinery.blob.core.windows.net/images/pic01.jpg
Account: MovieConversion
blobs Container: Originals Container: Completed
- Job1.mpg - Job 9.mpg
- Job2.mpg - Index.docx
- Header.png - Job8.pdf
12. CONTAINERS
• Similar to a top level folder
• Special $root container
http://cohowinery.blob.core.windows.net/pic01.jpg
http://cohowinery.blob.core.windows.net/$root/pic01.jpg
• Has an unlimited capacity
• Can only contain BLOBs
• Associate Metadata with Container
Each container has an access level:
- Private
- Default, will require the account key to access
- Public read access for blobs only
- Blob data within this container can be read via anonymous request, but container data is
not available
- Full public read
- Container and blob data can be read via anonymous request
13. BLOB
• Main Web Service Operations
• PutBlob
• GetBlob
• DeleteBlob
• CopyBlob
• SnapshotBlob
• LeaseBlob
• Associate Metadata with Blob
• Metadata is <name, value> pairs, up to 8KB per blob
• Blob always accessed by name
• Can include „/„ or other delimeter in name
• e.g. /<container>/myblobs/blob.jpg
20. SHARED ACCESS SIGNATURE
• Fine grain access rights to blobs and containers
• Sign URL with storage key – permit elevated
rights
• Revocation
• Use short time periods and re-issue
• Use container level policy that can be deleted
• Two broad approaches
• Ad-hoc
• Policy based
21. AD HOC SIGNATURES
• Create Short Dated Shared Access Signature
• Signedresource Blob or Container
• AccessPolicy Start, Expiry and Permissions
• Signature HMAC-SHA256 of above fields
• Use case
• Single use URLs
• E.g. Provide URL to Silverlight client to upload to container
22. POLICY BASED SIGNATURES
• Create Container Level Policy
• Specify StartTime, ExpiryTime, Permissions
• Create Shared Access Signature URL
• Signedresource Blob or Container
• Signedidentifier Optional pointer to container policy
• Signature HMAC-SHA256 of above fields
• Use case
• Providing revocable permissions to certain users/groups
• To revoke: Delete or update container policy
24. CONTENT DELIVERY NETWORK
• High-bandwidth global blob content delivery
• 24 locations globally (US, Europe, Asia, Australia and South
America), and growing
• Same experience for users no matter how far they are from the
geo-location where the storage account is hosted
• Blob service URL vs. CDN URL:
• Windows Azure Blob URL: http://images.blob.core.windows.net/
• Windows Azure CDN URL: http://<id>.vo.msecnd.net/
• Custom Domain Name for CDN: http://cdn.contoso.com/
25. CONTENT DELIVERY NETWORK
North Europe
North Central US East Asia
West Europe
South Central US
South East Asia
29. LIVE PERFORMANCE COUNTER
• Checkout: http://tinyurl.com/wely-live-perf
• Hosting web content in Blob Storage
• Query Blob Storage from the browser
Idea courtesy to
Steve Marx
30. THANK YOU!
Wely Lau (wely@ncs.com.sg)
Microsoft MVP, Windows Azure
Solutions Architect, NCS Pte Ltd
Blog : http://wely-lau.net
Notas del editor
This session discusses your data and the Windows Azure platform.
Slide ObjectiveUnderstand the Development Storage ServiceSpeaking notesClient side simulator of storage in the cloud. Allows completely disconnected (e.g. while travelling on a plane) development of Windows Azure appsCan consume just like Cloud storage- from Development Fabric, from another application running locallyIs locked down so that it cannot be called from off the boxIf you need this capability run a reverse proxy on the dev machineCan use CSRun to start and stop serviceMore on this in Day 3Uses a single fixed account. The account name and key are always the sameAnyone memorized the Account key yet? Eby8vd…..Noteshttp://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd179339.aspxThe Windows® Azure™ SDK development environment includes development storage, a utility that simulates the Blob, Queue, and Table services available in the cloud. If you are building a hosted service that employs storage services or writing any external application that calls storage services, you can test locally against development storage.The development storage utility provides a user interface to view the status of the local storage services and to start, stop, and reset them.This topic contains the following subtopics:
