Azure Table storage is used for storing a large amount of structured data. This service is a NoSQL data storage, which accepts authenticated calls from inside and outside of the Azure cloud. It is ideal for storing structured and non-relational data.

In case if you want to store relational data, then you should not use the Azure database. Unlike a relational database where the table has a fixed number of columns, and every row in the table should have those columns in the Azure table, which is a NoSQL data store. Each table can have entities, and each entity can have different properties. So generally, the schema will not be enforced on the objects that belong to a table.

Typical uses of Table storage include:

Table storage is used for storing TBs of structured data capable of serving web-scale applications.
It is used for storing datasets that don’t require complex joins, foreign keys, or stored procedures and can be denormalized for fast access.
It is used for quickly querying data using a clustered index.
There are two ways of accessing data, one is using the OData protocol, and the other is LINQ queries with WCF Data Services with .NET Libraries.

Azure Table Structure

We need to create a storage account first because Azure table storage is offered under storage account, and then you have tables within that storage account. E.g., you can create employee table, address table, and each table will contain entities and entities will further include key-value pair like name email within an employee table.

However, one key difference here to the Azure table is the NoSQL data store and relational databases. These entities can have different schemas, so the first entity can have the name, email, and the second entity can have a name, email, and phone number also.

Azure table storage concepts

Accounts: Every access to Azure storage service is done through a storage account, and all access to Azure Cosmos DB is done through a Table API account. So there are two types of tables Storage services available in Azure. The first one is Azure table storage, and the second one is a premium version, which is under Cosmos’s DB. So if you are looking for a brilliant performance with low latency, then go for Cosmos’s DB, particularly when you are dealing with mission-critical applications. In case if you can compromise on performance, but if you want to optimize the cost, then go for table storage.
Table: It is a collection of entities. As we know, tables don’t put a schema on entities that mean a single table can contain entities with different properties set.
Entity: It is a set of properties, a similarly as database row. Azure Storage can be of 1MB in the size of the entity. But if we are using the premium version, which is Azure Cosmos DB, it can be of 2MB in size.
Properties: It is a name-value pair where each entity can include up to 252 properties to store the data, and in addition to user properties, that means whatever the features you add. There are some system properties also that specify a partition key, a row key, and a timestamp. So, every entity will have these three properties as a default. And when we are querying the data, we can carry the data based on the partition key and row key, and under the single partition, this row key should be unique. So when we query the data, we query the data with a partition key and row key. Generally, when we are fetching the entity from a single partition, it will be rapid because all the objects belong to a separate partition will be stored in one server in the background within Azure.

When you find a query, it needs to go to one server only to fetch the data, but if your query includes data that exists in 2-3 partitions, then the question used to go to multiple servers in the background, thereby the performance of the query will be impacted. So we need to keep that in mind when we are designing this table storage.

There are two access points

Azure table storage: If we use Azure table storage then we can have http://<storageaccount>. table.core.windows.net/<table>
Azure Cosmos DB Table API: If we use the premium version then we need to use http://<storageaccount>. table.cosmosdb.Azure.com/<table>

Table Storage queries

Queries retrieve the data from tables because a table only has one index. Query performance is usually related to the PartitionKey and RowKey properties.

Here is a sample query to retrieve data from the server:

<account>.windows.core.net/registrations(PartitionKey=”2011 NewYork City Marathon_Full”, RowKey=”1234_Ankit_M_55″)

Azure Queue Storage Service

It is a queue service, but there is a more advanced version of the queue service that is available in Azure, which is a service bus queue.

It is a service for storing a large number of messages in the cloud that can be accessed from anywhere in the world using HTTP and HTTPS.
A queue contains a set of message. Queue name must be all lowercase.
A single queue message can be up to 64KB in size. A message can remain in the queue for a maximum time of 7 days
URL format is http://<storage account>.queue.core.windows.net/<queue>
When the message is retrieved from the queue, it stays invisible for 30 seconds. A message needs to be explicitly deleted from the queue to avoid getting picked up by another application.

Azure Disk Storage

VM uses disks as a place to store an operating system, applications, and data in Azure. All virtual machines have at least two disks- a Windows operating system disk and a temporary disk. Both the operating system disk and the image are virtual hard disks (VHDs) stored in an Azure storage account. The VHDs used in Azure is .vhd files stored as page blobs in a standard or premium storage account in Azure. Virtual machines can also have one or more data disks that are also stored as VHDs.

Temporary Disk: It is associated with the virtual machine that will be located in the underlying hardware from where the server is provisioned. So, the temporary disk will not be stored in a storage account. It will be stored in the underlying hardware from where this server is located.

Types of Disk

Different kinds of disks that are offered by Azure:

Unmanaged disks: It is a traditional type of disk that has been used by VMs. With these disks, we can create our storage account and specify that storage account when we create the disk. We must not put too many disks in the same storage account, resulting in the VMs being throttled.

Managed disks: It handles the storage account creation/management in the background for us and ensures that we do not have to worry about the scalability limits of the storage account. We specify the disk size and the performance tier (standard/premium), and Azure creates and manages the disk for us.

Standard HDD disks: It delivers cost-effective storage. It can be replicated locally in one data-center, or be geo-redundant with primary and secondary data centers.
Standard SDD disks: It is designed to address the same kind of workloads as standard HDD disks, but offer more consistent performance and reliability than HDD. It is suitable for applications like web servers that do not need high IOPS on disks.
Premium SSD disks: It is backed by SSDs, and delivers high-performance, low-latency disk support for VMs running I/O-intensive workloads. The premium SSD disks are mainly used for production and database servers. So if we are hosting a database in a particular server, then the premium SSD will be a good option.

Microsoft recommends that we should use managed disks for all new VMs and convert our previous unmanaged to managed disks.

Disks backup

When we have this OS disk or data disk associated with Virtual Machine, we need to take the backup of the same regularly so that in case of data risk scenario, we can recover the data.

Azure provides the Azure backup service, which you can install as a backup extension on a particular VM and the extension based on the frequency you specified will take the snapshot off OS disk, and the data disk. And also, at different levels, so we can bring application-consistent snapshots, file consistent snapshots, and these snapshots will be moved into recovery service vault. That’s where these snapshots will be stored. In case if something goes wrong with our VM or any particular data center is gone. We can still recover the virtual machine using these snapshots, and if we want to have a geo-redundant ability, then we can have this recovery services vault located in another region.

So, for example, if our VM is located in northern Europe, then we can have a recovery service vault located in West Europe. In that way, we can protect our workloads against regional failure also.

So, this brings us to the end of blog. This Tecklearn ‘Azure Table, Queue and Disk Storage’ blog helps you with commonly asked questions if you are looking out for a job in Azure and Cloud Computing. If you wish to learn Microsoft Azure and build a career in Cloud Computing domain, then check out our interactive, Microsoft Azure Developer and Administrator Training, that comes with 24*7 support to guide you throughout your learning period. Please find the link for course details:

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