Storage - Assemble

Designing storage for the Microsoft cloud

Integrating your storage by using Microsoft cloud services gives you access to a broad range of services and cloud platform options

"Some assembly required"

  • Use existing services as a starting point for your storage solution.

  • Require some configuration or coding.

  • Can be customized to fit your needs.

Azure Content Delivery Network

Features

  • Advanced and real time analytics

  • Robust security against DDoS

  • Gets content automatically from an Azure Website or Azure Cloud Service once you set up the integration

  • New partnership with Akamai

  • Can handle sudden traffic spikes and heavy loads

Common uses
  • Distribute audio, video, applications, images, and other files faster and more reliably to customers by using the servers that are closest to them
Key scenarios

  • Manage data

  • Manage videos

HdInsight

Features

  • Apache Hadoop distribution powered by the cloud A Data Lake service

  • Scale to petabytes on demand

  • Process unstructured and semi-structured data Develop in Java, .NET, and more

  • Skip buying and maintaining hardware

  • Connect on-premises Hadoop clusters with the cloud

  • Flexibility to deploy arbitrary Hadoop projects through custom scripts (e.g. R, Giraph, Solr)

Common uses

  • Data analytics workloads

  • In-memory data processing framework for big data (Spark)

  • Real-time stream processing (Storm)

  • Large transactional processing (OLTP) of non-relational data (HBase)

Key scenarios

  • Manage data

Azure SQL Database

Features

  • Optimized to reduce management and costs

  • Automatic high availability, disaster recovery, and upgrade

  • Recommended for organizations managing hundreds or thousands of databases of up to 1 TB in size

  • Sharding techniques can split data across databases for increased storage

  • Stretch database with SQL Server 2016

Common uses

  • New cloud-designed applications with relational data

  • Data processing over schematic, highly structured data sets with relationships

  • Spatial data or rich data types

Key scenarios

  • Manage data

Elastic database

Use the virtually unlimited resources of Azure SQL Database when:

  • The total amount of data is too large to fit within the constraints of a single database.

  • The transaction throughput of the overall workload exceeds the capabilities of a single database.

  • Tenants require physical isolation from each other, so separate databases are needed for each tenant.

  • Different sections of a database need to reside in different geographies for compliance, performance, or geopolitical reasons.

With vertical scaling, you can change Azure database performance level/edition or by using elastic database pools.

With horizontal scaling, you can add new databases as needed.

Stretch Database with SQL Server 2016

Stretch database is a feature of SQL Server 2016 that allows you to transparently and securely move cold data, such as closed business data in a large table that contains customer order information, to a SQL Stretch database in Azure. When stretched, the contents of a SQL Server instance, a database, or even a single table is the combination of local data in SQL Server 2016 server and remote data in Azure. Data that becomes eligible for stretch is automatically moved to Azure by SQL Server 2016.

User queries that include the historical data are transparently forwarded to Azure SQL Stretch database. The queries do not need to be re-written, even though the table is stretched.

Stretch database provides a cost-effective option for long-term storage and transparent access to historical data. It also solves performance and availability problems that arise when tables become very large.

Azure Cosmos DB

Features

  • Guaranteed low latency, 99.99% availability SLA with limitless, elastic scale of storage and throughput

  • All data is globally replicated across any number of regions with transparent failover and four well-defined consistency levels

  • Automatically indexes all your data without requiring schemas or secondary indices

  • Rich SQL and JavaScript queries and multi-item transactions

Common uses

  • IoT, Mobile and Social

  • Gaming

  • Retail

  • Content management

Key scenarios

  • Manage data

Cosmos DB vs. Azure Tables vs. Azure SQL Database

Common attributes of Cosmos DB, Azure Table Storage, and Azure SQL Database:

  • 99.99 availability SLA

  • Fully managed database services

  • ISO 27001, HIPAA and EU Model Clauses Compliant

The following table shows the uncommon attributes of Azure Cosmos DB, Azure Table Storage, and Azure SQL Database.

Azure Media Services

Features

  • Live and video on demand (VOD) delivery with scale

  • Highly available encoding and streaming

  • Supports Flash, iOS, Android, HTML5, and Xbox

  • Studio-certified DRM support

  • Rich content monetization

  • Broad ecosystem of pre-integrated partners

Common uses

  • Encode, store, and stream audio and video at scale

  • Real time streaming and VOD

  • Streamlined video content management

Key scenarios

  • Manage videos

Azure Redis Cache

Features

  • Secure, dedicated Redis server with high-availability with data replication and failover managed by Microsoft

  • Recommended for any app needing high-throughput

  • Available in sizes up to 530 GB and beyond (with Premium and automatic sharding)

  • Redis Persistence persists in-memory cached data to Azure Storage

  • Redis Clustering allows you to achieve maximum scale and throughput

  • Enhanced security and network isolation with Azure Virtual Network support

Common uses

  • Encode, store, and stream audio and video at scale

  • Real time streaming and VOD

  • Streamlined video content management

Key scenarios

  • Cache data

  • Message broker for high-throughput applications

SQL Server on an Azure VM

Features

  • SQL Server running as an installed application on an Azure virtual machine

  • Use a gallery image with SQL Server installed or bring your own SQL Server license

Common uses
  • Manage data for applications
Key scenarios
  • Manage data

StorSimple

Features

  • Scalable, enterprise hybrid SAN storage with SSD and HDD in the on-premises hybrid storage array, with cloud storage as an integrated extension of the solution

  • Inline deduplication, compression, automatic tiering, and encryption unstructured and semi structured data

  • Automated offsite data protection using cloud snapshots

  • Highly-efficient, location-independent disaster recovery

  • Data mobility for enterprise data with StorSimple Virtual Appliance in Azure

Common uses

  • Manage data growth related to file shares, archives, and other data repositories

  • Offsite data protection and disaster recovery for file shares, virtual machines, SQL, and SharePoint (using Remote Blob Storage)

  • Utilize cloud snapshots to clone data in Azure and increase business agility

Key scenarios

  • Manage data

  • Collaborate

Azure SQL Data Warehouse

Features

  • Elastic data warehouse that scales to petabytes Up to 32 concurrent queries

  • Manage large volumes of structured data with fast analytics Dynamically grow and shrink compute in seconds

  • Supports Transparent Data Encryption

  • Backed up every 8 hours for 7 days

Common uses

  • Sales reports

  • Usage reports

  • Lots of data

Key scenarios

  • Manage data

Azure Data Lake Store

Features

  • A hyper-scale repository for big data analytics workloads

  • A Hadoop Distributed File System for the cloud

  • No fixed limits on file size

  • No fixed limits on account size

  • Unstructured and structured data in their native format

  • Massive throughput to increase analytic performance

  • High durability, availability, and reliability (99.9% enterprise-grade SLA and 24/7 support)

  • Azure Active Directory access control

Common uses
  • Enterprise-wide repository to store every type of data collected in a single place
Key scenarios

  • Manage data