Azure Storage

Azure Storage is a scalable object storage platform that offers several nonrelational data storage services for use with Azure applications and databases, traditional file shares, and other workloads deployed on Azure and on-premises.

Service Overview

The service includes scalable, nonrelational data storage types with a variety of size, performance, disaster recovery, and availability options to accommodate different workload requirements:

• Blobs provide object-based storage for large amounts of unstructured data
• Disks are used for attached storage for Azure VMs
• Elastic SAN (in preview) provides hosted block storage with configurable performance, managed like an on-premises storage area network (SAN) appliance
• Files support shared file storage using traditional Server Message Block (SMB) protocol and NFS
• Queues handle messages sent between services and applications
• Tables support nonrelational NoSQL (not only SQL) flexible data schemas, typically used for mobile and Web applications.

Azure Storage can be used by applications deployed in Azure and on-premises.