Microsoft Azure Storage Team Blog https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/windowsazurestorage/feed.xml Thu, 28 Jun 2018 21:01:18 GMT en-US hourly 1 (Cross Post) Static website hosting for Azure Storage now in public preview https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/windowsazurestorage/azure-storage-static-web-hosting-public-preview Thu, 28 Jun 2018 20:30:41 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/windowsazurestorage/?p=1985 Today we are excited to announce the public preview of static website hosting for Azure Storage! The feature set is available in all public cloud regions with support in government and sovereign clouds coming soon.

This set of new storage capabilities provides a cost-effective and scalable solution for hosting modern web applications. For more details on the feature, see the Microsoft Azure Blog and the complete static websites documentation.

]]> (Cross Post) Immutable storage for Azure Storage Blobs now in public preview https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/windowsazurestorage/azure-immutable-blob-storage-now-in-public-preview Tue, 19 Jun 2018 20:00:19 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/windowsazurestorage/?p=1955 Microsoft Azure Blog.]]> (Cross Post) Azure Blob Storage lifecycle management in public preview https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/windowsazurestorage/cross-post-azure-blob-storage-lifecycle-management-in-public-preview Wed, 13 Jun 2018 23:20:18 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/windowsazurestorage/?p=1965 Last year, we released Blob-Level Tiering which allows you to transition blobs between the Hot, Cool, and Archive tiers without moving data between accounts. Both Blob-Level Tiering and Archive Storage help you optimize storage performance and cost. You asked us to make it easier to manage and automate, so we did. Today we are excited to announce the public preview of Blob Storage lifecycle management so that you can automate blob tiering and retention with lifecycle management policies. For more detail, please see the original post at Microsoft Azure Blog.]]> (Cross Post) Announcing general availability of soft delete for Azure Storage Blobs https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/windowsazurestorage/ga-soft-delete-for-azure-storage-blobs Wed, 30 May 2018 21:00:05 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/windowsazurestorage/?p=1945 soft delete for Azure Storage Blobs! The feature is available in all regions for public, government and sovereign clouds. When turned on, soft delete enables you to save and recover your data when blobs or blob snapshots are deleted. This protection extends to blob data that is erased as the result of an overwrite. For more details on the feature, see the Microsoft Azure Blog and the complete soft delete documentation.]]> (Cross Post) Announcing public preview of soft delete for Azure Storage Blobs https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/windowsazurestorage/public-preview-soft-delete-for-azure-storage-blobs Wed, 28 Mar 2018 14:00:35 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/windowsazurestorage/?p=1925 soft delete for Azure Storage Blobs! The feature is available in all regions, both public and private. When turned on, soft delete enables you to save and recover your data when blobs or blob snapshots are deleted. This protection extends to blob data that is erased as the result of an overwrite. For more details on the feature, see the Microsoft Azure blog and the complete soft delete documentation.]]> (Cross-Post) Cloud storage now more affordable: Announcing general availability of Azure Archive Storage https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/windowsazurestorage/cross-post-cloud-storage-now-more-affordable-announcing-general-availability-of-azure-archive-storage Wed, 13 Dec 2017 16:28:30 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/windowsazurestorage/?p=1916 Archive Blob Storage starting at an industry leading price of $0.002 per gigabyte per month! Last year, we launched Cool Blob Storage to help customers reduce storage costs by tiering their infrequently accessed data to the Cool tier. Organizations can now reduce their storage costs even further by storing their rarely accessed data in the Archive tier. Furthermore, we’re also excited to announce the general availability of Blob-Level Tiering, which enables customers to optimize storage costs by easily managing the lifecycle of their data across these tiers at the object level. From startups to large organizations, our customers in every industry have experienced exponential growth of their data. A significant amount of this data is rarely accessed but must be stored for a long period of time to meet either business continuity or compliance requirements; think employee data, medical records, customer information, financial records, backups, etc. Additionally, recent and coming advances in artificial intelligence and data analytics are unlocking value from data that might have previously been discarded. Customers in many industries want to keep more of these data sets for a longer period but need a scalable and cost-effective solution to do so. “We have been working with the Azure team to preview Archive Blob Storage for our cloud archiving service for several months now.  I love how easy it is to change the storage tier on an existing object via a single API. This allows us to build Information Lifecycle Management into our application logic directly and use Archive Blob Storage to significantly decrease our total Azure Storage costs.”

-Tom Inglis, Director of Enabling Solutions at BP

For more detail, please see the original post at Microsoft Azure Blog.]]> (Cross-Post) Announcing the public preview of Azure Archive Blob Storage and Blob-Level Tiering https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/windowsazurestorage/cross-post-announcing-the-public-preview-of-azure-archive-blob-storage-and-blob-level-tiering Mon, 28 Aug 2017 18:25:24 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/windowsazurestorage/?p=1906 Cool Blob Storage to help customers reduce storage costs by tiering their infrequently accessed data to the Cool tier. Today we're announcing the public preview of Archive Blob Storage designed to help organizations reduce their storage costs even further by storing rarely accessed data in our lowest-priced tier yet. Furthermore, we're excited to introduce the public preview of Blob-Level Tiering enabling you to optimize storage costs by easily managing the lifecycle of your data across these tiers at the object level. For more detail, please see the original post at Microsoft Azure Blog    ]]> Announcing AzCopy on Linux Preview https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/windowsazurestorage/announcing-azcopy-on-linux-preview Tue, 16 May 2017 20:31:33 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/windowsazurestorage/?p=1875 AzCopy on Linux with redesigned command-line interface that adopts POSIX parameter conventions. AzCopy is a command-line utility designed for copying large amounts of data to, and from Azure Blob, and File storage using simple commands with optimal performance. AzCopy is now built with .NET Core which supports both Windows and Linux platforms. AzCopy also takes a dependency on the Data Movement Library which is built with .NET Core enabling many of the capabilities of the Data Movement Library in AzCopy!

Install and run AzCopy on Linux

  1. Install .NET Core on Linux
  2. Download and extract the tar archive for AzCopy (version 6.0.0-netcorepreview)
wget -O azcopy.tar.gz https://aka.ms/downloadazcopyprlinux
tar -xf azcopy.tar.gz
  1. Install and run azcopy
sudo ./install.sh
azcopy
If you do not have superuser privileges, alternatively you can also run AzCopy by changing to azcopy directory and then running ./azcopy.

What is supported?

  • Feature parity with AzCopy on Windows (5.2) for Blob and File scenarios
    • Parallel upload and downloads
    • Built-in retry mechanism
    • Resume, or restart from a failed transfer session
    • And many other features highlighted in the AzCopy guide

What is not supported?

  • Azure Storage Table service is not supported in AzCopy on Linux

Samples

It is as simple as the legacy AzCopy, with command line options that follow POSIX conventions. Watch the following sample where I upload a directory of 100GB in size. It is simple! AzCopy on Linux To learn more about all the command line options, issue 'azcopy --help' command. Here are a few other samples:
  1. Upload VHD files to Azure Storage
azcopy --source /mnt --include "*.vhd" --destination "https://myaccount.blob.core.windows.net/mycontainer?sv=2016-05-31&ss=bfqt&srt=sco&sp=rwdlacup&se=2017-05-10T21:45:18Z&st=2017-05-09T13:45:18Z&spr=https,http&sig=kQ42XrayIifuE4SGYaAy6COHoIanP7H9Qi3R0KqHs7M%3D"
  1. Download a container using Storage Account Key
azcopy --recursive --source https://myaccount.blob.core.windows.net/mycontainer --source-key "lYZbbIHTePy2Co…..==" --destination /mnt
  1. Synchronous copy across Storage accounts
azcopy --source https://ocvpwd5f77vcqsalinuxvm.blob.core.windows.net/mycontainer --source-key "lXHqgIHTePy2Co….==" --destination https://testaccountseguler.blob.core.windows.net/mycontainer --dest-key "uT8nw5…. ==" –-sync-copy

AzCopy on Windows

AzCopy on Windows developed with .NET Framework will continue to be released and documented here. AzCopy on Windows offers DOS command-line parameters that Windows users are familiar with.

Feedback

AzCopy on Linux is currently in preview, and we will make improvements as we hear from our users. So, if you have any comments or issues, please leave a comment below.

]]> New Azure Storage JavaScript client library for browsers - Preview https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/windowsazurestorage/new-azure-storage-javascript-client-library-for-browsers-preview Tue, 07 Mar 2017 19:23:50 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/windowsazurestorage/?p=1865 Azure Storage Client Library for JavaScript. The demand for the Azure Storage Client Library for Node.js, as well as your feedback, has encouraged us to work on a browser-compatible JavaScript library to enable web development scenarios with Azure Storage. With that, we are now releasing the preview of Azure Storage JavaScript Client Library for Browsers.

Enables web development scenarios

The JavaScript Client Library for Azure Storage enables many web development scenarios using storage services like Blob, Table, Queue, and File, and is compatible with modern browsers. Be it a web-based gaming experience where you store state information in the Table service, uploading photos to a Blob account from a Mobile app, or an entire website backed with dynamic data stored in Azure Storage. As part of this release, we have also reduced the footprint by packaging each of the service APIs in a separate JavaScript file. For instance, a developer who needs access to Blob storage only needs to require the following scripts: <script type=”javascript/text” src=”azure-storage.common.js”/> <script type=”javascript/text” src=”azure-storage.blob.js”/>

Full service coverage

The new JavaScript Client Library for Browsers supports all the storage features available in the latest REST API version 2016-05-31 since it is built with Browserify using the Azure Storage Client Library for Node.js. All the service features you would find in our Node.js library are supported. You can also use the existing API surface, and the Node.js Reference API documents to build your app!

Built with Browserify

Browsers today don’t support the require method, which is essential in every Node.js application. Hence, including a JavaScript written for Node.js won’t work in browsers. One of the popular solutions to this problem is Browserify. The Browserify tool bundles your required dependencies in a single JS file for you to use in web applications. It is as simple as installing Browserify and running browserify node.js -o browser.js and you are set. However, we have already done this for you. Simply download the JavaScript Client Library.

Recommended development practices

We highly recommend use of SAS tokens to authenticate with Azure Storage since the JavaScript Client Library will expose the authentication token to the user in the browser. A SAS token with limited scope and time is highly recommended. In an ideal web application it is expected that the backend application will authenticate users when they log on, and will then provide a SAS token to the client for authorizing access to the Storage account. This removes the need to authenticate using an account key. Check out the Azure Function sample in our Github repository that generates a SAS token upon an HTTP POST request. Use of the stream APIs are highly recommended due to the browser sandbox that blocks users from accessing the local filesystem. This makes the stream APIs like getBlobToLocalFile, createBlockBlobFromLocalFile unusable in browsers. See the samples in the link below that use createBlockBlobFromStream API instead.

Sample usage

Once you have a web app that can generate a limited scope SAS Token, the rest is easy! Download the JavaScript files from the repository on Github and include in your code. Here is a simple sample that can upload a blob from a given text: 1. Insert the following script tags in your HTML code. Make sure the JavaScript files located in the same folder. <script src="azure-storage.common.js"></script/> <script src="azure-storage.blob.js"></script/> 2. Let’s now add a few items to the page to initiate the transfer. Add the following tags inside the BODY tag. Notice that the button calls uploadBlobFromText method when clicked. We will define this method in the next step. <input type="text" id="text" name="text" value="Hello World!" /> <button id="upload-button" onclick="uploadBlobFromText()">Upload</button> 3. So far, we have included the client library and added the HTML code to show the user a text input and a button to initiate the transfer. When the user clicks on the upload button, uploadBlobFromText will be called. Let’s define that now: <script> function uploadBlobFromText() { // your account and SAS information var sasKey ="...."; var blobUri = "https://<accountname>.blob.core.windows.net"; var blobService = AzureStorage.createBlobServiceWithSas(blobUri, sasKey).withFilter(new AzureStorage.ExponentialRetryPolicyFilter()); var text = document.getElementById('text'); var btn = document.getElementById("upload-button"); blobService.createBlockBlobFromText('mycontainer', 'myblob', text.value,  function(error, result, response){ if (error) { alert('Upload filed, open browser console for more detailed info.'); console.log(error); } else { alert('Upload successfully!'); } }); } </script> Of course, it is not that common to upload blobs from text. See the following samples for uploading from stream as well as a sample for progress tracking. •    JavaScript Sample for Blob •    JavaScript Sample for Queue •    JavaScript Sample for Table •    JavaScript Sample for File

Share

Finally, join our Slack channel to share with us your scenarios, issues, or anything, really. We’ll be there to help!]]> (Cross-Post) General Availability: Larger Block Blobs in Azure Storage https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/windowsazurestorage/general-availability-larger-block-blobs-in-azure-storage Thu, 22 Dec 2016 20:15:44 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/windowsazurestorage/?p=1785 Microsoft Azure Blog. Azure Blob Storage is a massively scalable object storage solution capable of storing and serving tens to hundreds of petabytes of data per customer across a diverse set of data types including media, documents, log files, scientific data and much more. Many of our customers use Blobs to store very large data sets, and have requested support for larger files. The introduction of larger Block Blobs increases the maximum file size from 195 GB to 4.77 TB. The increased blob size better supports a diverse range of scenarios, from media companies storing and processing 4K and 8K videos to cancer researchers sequencing DNA. Azure Block Blobs have always been mutable, allowing a customer to insert, upload or delete blocks of data without needing to upload the entire blob. With the new larger block blob size, mutability offers even more significant performance and cost savings, especially for workloads where portions of a large object are frequently modified. For a deeper dive into the Block Blobs service including object mutability, please view this video from our last Build Conference. The REST API documentation for Put Block and Put Block List also covers object mutability. We have increased the maximum allowable block size from 4 MB to 100 MB, while maintaining support for up to 50,000 blocks committed to a single Blob. Range GETs continue to be supported on larger Block Blobs allowing high speed parallel downloads of the entire Blob, or just portions of the Blob. You can immediately begin taking advantage of this improvement in any existing Blob Storage or General Purpose Storage Account across all Azure regions. Larger Block Blobs are supported by the most recent releases of the .NET Client Library (version 8.0.0), the Java Client Library (version 5.0.0), the Node.js Client Library (version 2.0.0) and the AzCopy Command-Line Utility (version 5.2.0). You can also directly use the REST API as always. Larger Block Blobs are supported by REST API version 2016-05-31 and later. There is nothing new to learn about the APIs, so you can start uploading larger Block Blobs right away. This size increase only applies to Block Blobs, and the maximum size of Append Blobs (195 GB) and Page Blobs (1 TB) remains unchanged. There are no billing changes. To get started using Azure Storage Blobs, please see our getting started documentation, or reference one of our code samples.]]>