Options for storing and processing data in the Microsoft Azure cloud

I am very pleased today to tell you about the data storage capabilities in the Azure cloud . We know that data is the most important thing we have, data is what infrastructure is created for and IT exists in general. Therefore, the issue of data storage is the most important.

Microsoft Azure. How we store our and your data

To begin, let's see how Microsoft stores data for its own services and data of its users and what options the company uses and offers to customers.

It is very important for us to provide all the needs of our customers and therefore we are constantly expanding our data centers, increasing their capacities and creating new ones. Today we offer 16 of the most modern and very large data centers around the world, ensuring the work of hundreds of our services and services of thousands of our customers, which are used by hundreds of millions of people around the world. Because of this, Azure services are available in 89 markets with round-the-clock and daily support.

Speaking about the data, you need to understand that the data volumes of an average enterprise grow by 50-60% every year, however, the work with the data in companies is mainly performed on a certain working data set that it is reasonable to put in the local storage. The rest of the data is the most profitable to place and process in the cloud, reducing costs, keeping in mind the low cost of cloud data storage compared to the cost of its own infrastructure.

Business has long recognized the benefits of cloud storage, which is why more than 10 trillion user objects have been saved in Azure storage today! Our repository is not only growing every year, but it is becoming cheaper and faster, as independent analytical companies say.

An important issue of data storage is their security, reliable storage. In Azure, any data item is stored at least THREE times, no matter what you store. At the same time, you yourself absolutely do not need to think about safety. We undertake the task of replication and data recovery within the data center for the absolute reliability of the preservation of your data.

Thinking about the reliability of data, we go even further and offer you to ensure reliability even in cases where a huge data center will be disabled, for example, in the event of a natural disaster. To ensure even greater reliability, we copy three copies of your data again, this time to another data center, which is located at least 400 miles away from the first one. With this we guarantee that even if the erupting volcano destroys one data center, your data will be available to your customers from the automatically created replica in another data center.

Most large or medium-sized companies today already have their own data storage and processing solutions. In this case, you may need solutions for continuous power expansion. For these tasks, we offer a unique service StorSimple, which allows you to expand your data center to the Azure cloud, automatically archiving unused data to the cloud, saving locally only the most frequently used data. This approach allows companies to save from 60 to 80% of equipment costs today!

Speaking about the use of cloud storage for storing backup copies of data, it is important to be able to integrate existing solutions into the backup process. We offer the option of automatically backing up SQL Server data to Azure cloud storage and easy recovery in the cloud or on company servers.

When backing up databases, it is very important to be able to back up user and corporate files and folders. We offer a seamless integration of the corporate infrastructure backup process into a secure Azure cloud storage.

Azure Storage. Securely store huge amounts of data

Let's look at the specific services and capabilities of Azure in more detail. Let's start with the reliable Azure Storage .

Azure Storage is a single, distributed, secure storage for different types of data that allows each user to save petabytes of data without having to think about infrastructure and attachments.

Offering data storage growth capabilities, Azure Storage automatically replicates all data multiple times for reliable storage without user interaction.

Having a convenient, reliable storage is not enough to create cloud solutions. Convenient tools and development support are also required. Azure offers first-class developer support with integration into all popular languages, platforms and development tools.

Finally, speaking of data storage, it is necessary to think about the price of reliable storage. And here, to my satisfaction, the Azure Cloud offers the lowest prices on the market, with the best reliability and performance. Storing data in the Azure cloud is not only more reliable, but also cheaper!

Azure Storage offers the ability to store multiple types of data. Users can save structured data in the form of key-value sets.

Another option is to store message queues for reliable messaging in solutions with workflows.

The third possibility, and the most common, is storage in the Azure Storage cloud of any binary objects, including text files, documents, multimedia, and so on.

Finally, extending the ability to store blobs in Azure Storage is the ability to access storage as a normal network file storage, through standard protocols and APIs, which allow you to migrate old applications that do not know anything about the cloud, easily and simply.

Azure Cache. Cache data for quick access from code

The next Azure service that allows you to work with data is Azure Cache , which allows you to cache frequently used data in fast memory and reuse it.

Azure Cache offers the highest data access, save and fetch speeds and is optimized for high loads.

At the core of Azure Cache is the popular open source solution Redis, which opens up access to dozens of off-the-shelf tools and also offers efficient replication of your data in the cloud.

Start using the Azure cache is very simple, just set the parameters on the portal, in a minute get the addresses of access to the repository and start using it in the application. Everything is just that simple.

One of the great cache features in Azure is the ability to cache and efficiently use memory inside existing work roles that users can use for their solutions. This solution saves a lot.

Azure SQL Database. Store relational data without iron and admins

The most important data type with which applications and services work is relational SQL databases. Azure Cloud allows you to efficiently store this data and offers several approaches.

The Azure SQL Database service is a fully managed database service in the cloud that offers you to get the database as a service.

However, we completely manage the database deployment infrastructure, we guarantee users predictability of performance, elastic scaling, continuity of work and rich opportunities for developers.

At the same time, you reduce the infrastructure costs to zero by passing us all the tasks of managing the database servers. Being managed services Azure SQL Database does not lose in functionality, remaining the solution of an enterprise level DBMS.

We recommend this cloud service to all architects and developers who need familiar DBA tools and development capabilities.

Together with the SQL Database service in the Azure cloud, you can host your own private database servers, for example, SQL Server. If you compare the two approaches, you can see that hosting your server offers more flexibility and full control over the server, while the SQL Database offers the opportunity to reduce administration costs to almost zero. We, creating Azure clouds, wanted to provide the opportunity for any choice for the user. Therefore, you can choose the solution that suits you best.

Azure DocumentDB. Store NoSQL data without schema, but with SQL queries

Recently, a variety of storage solutions for structured, but not relational data, under the general name NoSQL, have begun to gain popularity. To store this type of data, Azure provides an efficient and fast solution - DocumentDB service.

Azure DocumentDB - NoSQL solution originally developed and created with consideration of JavaScript and JSON data format.

However, DocumentDB is a NoSQL solution, a unique feature of the service is the ability to select data using the SQL query language. The data stored in DocumentDB does not have a scheme at all, and even the indexing function in the service works completely automatically, optimizing the data for a quick search.

The speed of DocumentDB service and access to it is provided by an optimized architecture and the use of SSD-drives.

Any data storage facility should be user and developer friendly, so DocumentDB offers open standards for access to data and a host of tools for developers.

Microsoft Azure. Many services for every taste, for any task.

Microsoft Azure offers a wealth of services for building cloud sites, solutions and services. Along with the basic and most popular services that we have already reviewed, Azure has a number of specialized services for working with data.

For example, use the Azure HDInsight service to get ready-made Hadoop clusters in the cloud on demand with a pre-configured environment and support for the entire Hadoop ecosystem. Use HDInsight for efficient processing of big data.

Use the new Azure Machine Learning service to implement machine learning and forecasting services.

Use Azure Search to get indexing capabilities on demand and to quickly search for any information.

Use Azure Backup to efficiently back up your data to the cloud.

Finally, use Azure CDN to efficiently distribute files across content delivery networks across sites.

With this, I want to complete a quick overview of data services in the Azure cloud. If you have any questions - write me an email or social networks.

useful links

• Try Azure for free for 30 days!
• Explore Microsoft Virtual Academy courses on cloud and other technologies
• Download free or trial Visual Studio
• Microsoft Azure Development Center (azurehub.ru) - scripts, tutorials, examples, recommendations on the choice of services and development
• Twitter.com/windowsazure_ru - the latest Microsoft Azure news
• Microsoft Azure Community on Facebook - experts, questions
• Become a universal Windows application developer