• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/storage/common/storage-introduction

• storage accounts provide the logical container/namespace for storage services like, blob containers, file shares, queues and tables.

• General-purpose v2 accounts - Basic storage account type for blobs, files, queues, and tables. Recommended for most scenarios using Azure Storage.
• General-purpose v1 accounts - Legacy account type for blobs, files, queues, and tables. Use general-purpose v2 accounts instead when possible.
• Block Blob Storage (premium) accounts - Premium storage account type for block blobs and append blobs. Recommended for scenarios with high transaction rates or that use smaller objects or require consistently low storage latency.
• File Storage accounts
• Blob Storage accounts - Legacy Blob-only storage accounts. Use general-purpose v2 accounts instead when possible.

• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/storage/common/authorize-data-access#understand-authorization-for-data-operations

• Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) integration/RBAC
  • This is the generally recommend method to use
  • You can grant permissions that are scoped to the level of an individual container or queue.
• Shared Key for blobs, files, queues, and tables. A client using Shared Key passes a header with every request that is signed using the storage account access key.
  • It is recommended to disable and not use this option.
  • MS recommends using Azure AD/RBAC instead of this option
  • If shared keys are used it is recommended to use Azure Key vault and to rotate keys periodically.
• Shared Access Signature (SAS)

A massively scalable object store for text and binary data. Also includes support for big data analytics through Data Lake Storage Gen2.

• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/storage/blobs/storage-blobs-introduction

• block blobs
  • used for text and binary files
  • optimized for uploading large amounts of data efficiently
  • block blobs can store up to about 190.7 TiB
• append blobs
  • optimized for append operations. log files is a common use case
• page blobs
  • support random read/write operations for things like VHD disk images for VMs
  • store random access files up to 8 TiB in size

• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/storage/blobs/access-tiers-overview

Azure Files provides managed file shares that are accessible via SMB or NFS.

A messaging store for reliable messaging between application components.

A NoSQL store for schemaless storage of structured data.

Block-level storage volumes for Azure VMs.