What is difference between storage accounts and data disk of VM.

Question

I have a query, "When there is option of add a data disk while creating a VM, then why we use storage accounts for storing data.?"

Answer 1

Do you mean "why we are using data disks attached to a VM if data could be stored directly in a Storage Account"?
If so:

A Storage Account is a "serverless storage" to store data. You are able to access the data without running a VM from internet and/or VMs in Azure.
A Storage account (fileshare or blob storage for example) can be used by a VM like a "network share"

A data disk is always attached to a VM. You can't access the data on the data disk directly from internet.
For the VM OS the data disk is attached to the VM and can be used by the OS and services like a "local disk" in your computer.

Does this help?

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(If the reply was helpful please don't forget to upvote and/or accept as answer, thank you)

Regards
Andreas Baumgarten

Answer 2

Azure storage accounts can store 3 types blob data

When you create a new disk for VM, it is stored as page blob in storage account.

Other than that there is Block blob type of data that can be stored - e.g. images, videos etc. for website, text files..

Storage account can also be used to store Append type of blob data - this files are used for logging purpose

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/storage/blobs/storage-blobs-introduction#blobs

There are few other uses cases where Storage account can be used

For more details - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/storage/common/storage-introduction#example-scenarios

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Please don't forget to Accept Answer and Up-vote if the response helped -- Vaibhav

Answer 3

Hi guys!

For a scenario having VPN S2S / P2S using AZURE VM (Windows Server) and file share with ntfs permissions, what would be best option for cost X benefit ?

VM + MANAGED DATA DISK or VM + STORAGE ACCOUNT(FILE SHARE)?

I think to use NTFS permissions on storage account, first you would have to join it to your domain, right?

but my question is regarding cost x benefit

thank you.
Igor