Preface

First off, I'd like to thank you for purchasing Learning Microsoft Azure Storage. Throughout the book, I've shared my entire experience with Azure Storage, which started in 2012 and has witnessed many changes in the storage services.

Microsoft Azure Storage is the bedrock of Microsoft's core storage solution offering in Azure. No matter what solution you are building for the cloud, you'll find a compelling use for Azure Storage. This book will help you get up-to-speed quickly with Microsoft Azure Storage by teaching you how to use the different storage services. You will be able to leverage secure design patterns based on real-world scenarios and develop a strong storage foundation for Azure Virtual Machines, and even your on-premises environment.
The aim of this book is to provide accurate and easy-to-follow instructions when working with Azure Storage.

I hope that this book will be a great asset to you. Also, if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, you can post it in the author online forum.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Understanding Azure Storage 101, introduces Azure Storage and its types. It helps you understand the difference between Azure Service Management (ASM), Azure Resource Management (ARM) model, and Azure Storage types in addition to working with Azure Storage accounts and using PowerShell to automate some, such as creating a storage account.

Chapter 2, Delving into Azure Storage, introduces Azure Storage services and explains how to work with them. It will also cover the architecture of Azure Storage and how to secure Azure Storage services, and the best practices that need to be followed to design highly available applications and the role of client libraries with storage services.

Chapter 3, Azure Storage for VMs, covers the process of creating Azure VMs and how it relates to and depend on Azure Storage, followed by the best practices you need to know to create a better and more cost-effective design for Azure VMs.

Chapter 4, Implementing Azure SQL Databases, introduces Azure SQL Databases and why to use them. The services tier and performance levels will also be covered followed by how to create, and restore Azure SQL Databases.

Chapter 5, Beyond Azure SQL Database Management, covers how the SQL database works in the (IaaS/PaaS) service model, how to work with elastic database pools, integrate Azure AD with Azure SQL Database, and how to make sure that your databases will be up and running even in the event that disasters occur.

Chapter 6, Azure Backup, introduces Azure Backup and why it is so important to use, how to configure it and how to go through the restoration process.

Chapter 7, Azure Site Recovery, introduces Azure Site Recovery and why to work with it. Then we move on to how to prepare your environment for Azure Site Recovery, how to implement it, and even test whether it works or not.

Chapter 8, Extending Your Azure Storage Management, covers StorSimple which is used to spread your storage across on-premises and Azure Storage, and some other cool tools, such as AzCopy and Azure Storage Explorer. Finally, you will be introduced to Azure Storage's three musketeers: monitoring, diagnosing, and troubleshooting.

What you need for this book

To follow along with what is covered in the book, you do not need a lot of resources. You only need a Windows 8 or above/Windows Server 2008 R2 or above for most of the topics with Azure PowerShell module installed on it, a SQL Server Management Studio 17.3 to connect to Azure SQL Database, as well as a quad-core, 8 GB memory, and 500 GB Disk VM to be used while working with Azure Site Recovery and StorSimple. Finally, some simple tools, such as AzCopy and Azure Storage Explorer would need to be downloaded.

Who this book is for

This book is intended at anyone interested in Azure generally, and Azure Storage specifically. Some basic knowledge about Azure, Hyper-V, and SQL Server would be very beneficial, but it is not mandatory.

Conventions

In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning. Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "Click on More services and a new blade will open. In the search bar, write storage account." A block of code is set as follows:

$Subnet = New-AzureRmVirtualNetworkSubnetConfig -Name PacktPubSubnet -AddressPrefix 10.0.0.0/24
$VirtualNetwork = New-AzureRmVirtualNetwork -ResourceGroupName PacktPub -Location WestEurope -Name PacktPubvNet -AddressPrefix 10.0.0.0/8 -Subnet $Subnet

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

az storage container create --name packtpubbs --public-access container --account-name packtpubsacli

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text like this: "To upload files to it, click on Upload and browse for the desired file."

Warnings or important notes appear like this.

Tips and tricks appear like this.

Reader feedback

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Downloading the color images of this book

We also provide you with a PDF file that has color images of the screenshots/diagrams used in this book. The color images will help you better understand the changes in the output. You can download this file from https://www.packtpub.com/sites/default/files/downloads/LearningMicrosoftAzureStorage_ColorImages.pdf.

Errata

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Questions

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