Personal Photo Storage

Question

If someone has setup a storage account through Azure for personal picture or is someone has a video link of instructions how please share. I am experimenting with different resources because our family OneDrive is full.

Answer 1

@Bill, Welcome to Microsoft Q&A Forum, Thank you for posting your query here!

Let me explain, what all option's, features and security we have in Azure storage, based on that you can choose on your requirement. It's depends what kind of data you need your client or users to view and what level of access or security is required(Read, write, modify and more)

One of the best way to access Azure Storage account is through Azure Storage explorer tool (Free tool to easily manage your Azure cloud storage resources anywhere, from Windows, macOS, or Linux

Azure Files enables you to set up highly available network file shares that can be accessed by using the standard Server Message Block (SMB) protocol. That means that multiple VMs can share the same files with both read and write access. You can also read the files using the REST interface or the storage client libraries.

• One thing that distinguishes Azure Files from files on a corporate file share is that you can access the files from anywhere in the world using a URL that points to the file and includes a shared access signature (SAS) token. You can generate SAS tokens; they allow specific access to a private asset for a specific amount of time.

A shared access signature (SAS) provides secure delegated access to resources in your storage account. With a SAS, you have granular control over how a client can access your data. For example:

• What resources the client may access.
• What permissions they have to those resources.
• How long the SAS is valid.

You can use shared access signatures (SAS) to generate tokens that have specific permissions, and which are valid for a specified time interval. For example, you can generate a token with read-only access to a specific file that has a 10-minute expiry. Anyone who possesses the token while the token is valid has read-only access to that file for those 10 minutes. Shared access signature keys are supported only via the REST API or in client libraries. You must mount the Azure file share over SMB by using the storage account keys. Authorizing access to data in Azure Storage Additional information:
Blob Storage Objects in Blob storage can be accessed from anywhere in the world via HTTP or HTTPS. Users or client applications can access blobs via URLs, the Azure Storage REST API, Azure PowerShell, Azure CLI, or an Azure Storage client library. The storage client libraries are available for multiple languages, including .NET, Java, Node.js, Python, PHP, and Ruby. You can serve static content (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and image files) directly from a storage container named $web. Hosting your content in Azure Storage enables you to use server less architectures that include Azure Functions and other Platform as a service (PaaS) services. Azure Storage static website hosting is a great option in cases where you don't require a web server to render content. Static website hosting in Azure Storage For more information about Blob storage, see Introduction to Blob storage. Hope this helps! Kindly let us know if the above helps or you need further assistance on this issue.

Answer 2

Hello Bill Leonard,

Greetings! Welcome to Microsoft Q&A forum.

Azure offers a variety of storage options that you can use to store your data. You can create a storage account in Azure to store your data. You can use this storage account to store your personal pictures and videos. refer - Create a storage account - Azure Storage | Microsoft Learn for creating a storage account.

  Azure Blob Storage is Microsoft's object storage solution for the cloud. Blob Storage is optimized for storing massive amounts of unstructured data. Blob Storage is designed for:

• Serving images or documents directly to a browser.
• Storing files for distributed access.
• Streaming video and audio.
• Writing to log files.
• Storing data for backup and restore, disaster recovery, and archiving.
• Storing data for analysis by an on-premises or Azure-hosted service.

Hence for your image storing purpose can be achieved by Blob storage service which is very much the 'cloud' way for storage purposes and relatively inexpensive. Please refer the following document and create the blob storage account - Introduction to Blob (object) Storage - Azure Storage | Microsoft Learn.  

Blob storage may be used for binary content, along with direct URL access to individual blobs. Your choice whether end-users (e.g. browsers/mobile apps/etc) would have direct access to these blobs (blobs may be marked as public or private; you may grant direct access to a private blob with a Shared Access Signature) as well.  

Additionally, you can deploy a web app. The web app uses the Azure Blob Storage client library to upload images to a storage account directly. Upload image data in the cloud with Azure Storage - Azure Event Grid | Microsoft Learn-this following document will help you in creating and configuring the app with right settings.  

Also please refer Plan and manage costs for Azure Blob Storage | Microsoft Learn for cost management of storage account services.  

To copy an image from personal OneDrive to Azure Blob Storage you can do it using Azure Storage Explorer or Azcopy tool simply,  

-Azure Storage Explorer is a free tool from Microsoft that allows you to work with Azure Storage data. Where you can link your OneDrive to Azure storage Explorer as folder and copy the files from there to Blob storage as well- Move Blob storage data with Azure Storage Explorer - Azure Architecture Center | Microsoft Learn.  

-AzCopy is a command-line utility that you can use to copy blobs or files to or from a storage account - Copy or move data to Azure Storage by using AzCopy v10 | Microsoft Learn.  

Apparently, Azure File Storage service also helps in storing images and azure Files offers fully managed file shares in the cloud that are accessible via the industry standard Server Message Block (SMB) protocol, Network File System (NFS) protocol, and Azure Files REST API with highly beneficial on accessing it with shared folders on different machines - Introduction to Azure Files | Microsoft Learn.  

Hope this answer helps! If yes please do not forget to "Accept the answer” and “up-vote” wherever the information provided helps you, this can be beneficial to other community members.