🏭🗒️Microsoft Fabric: Azure Storage Account [Notes]

Disclaimer: This is work in progress intended to consolidate information from various sources for learning purposes. For the latest information please consult the documentation (see the links below)! 

Last updated: 16-Mar-2025

[Microsoft Fabric] Azure Storage Account

• {def} a container provided by Microsoft Azure that houses all storage data in the cloud, including blobs (binary large objects), files, queues, and tables 
• provides a unique namespace for Azure Storage data that's accessible from anywhere in the world over HTTP or HTTPS [1]
• every object stored has a URL address that includes customer's unique account name [1]
• the combination of the account name and the service endpoint forms the endpoints for the storage account [1]
•  is an ARM resource
• ⇐  the deployment and management service for Azur [
• belongs to a Azure resource group
• ⇐ a logical container for grouping Azure services [3]
• {characteristic} durable
• {characteristic} highly available
• {characteristic} secure
• {characteristic} massively scalable
• {concept} storage account name
• must be between 3 and 24 characters in length
• may contain numbers and lowercase letters only
• must be unique within Azure
• {operation} create storage account 
• {operation} migrate storage account
• {scenario} move a storage account to a different subscription
• {scenario} move a storage account to a different resource group
• {scenario} move a storage account to a different region
• {scenario} upgrade to a general-purpose v2 storage account
• {scenario} migrate a classic storage account to Azure Resource Manager
• {operation} delete storage account
•  deletes the entire account, including all data in the account [3]
• recovery is not guaranteed
• under certain circumstances, a deleted storage account might be recovered [3]
• deleting the resource group,  deletes the storage account and any other resources in that resource group [3]
• {recommendation} back up any data before deleting the account [3]
• [operation} monitoring storage accounts
• see storage metrics in Azure Monitor
• {operation} transfer data into a storage account
• {type} general purpose v1 (GPv1)
• can no longer be created from the Azure portal [3]
• no new feature development is expected for this account type [3]
• currently there's no plan to deprecate support [3]
• at least one year's advance notice will be provided before deprecating [3]
• {type} general purpose v2 (GPv2)
• recommended for most scenarios [3]
• support the latest Azure Storage features and incorporate all of the functionality of GPv1 [4]
• upgrading to a GPv2 storage account from GPv1 or Blob storage accounts is straightforward [4]
• permanent and cannot be undone [4]
• there's no downtime or risk of data loss associated [4]
• happens via a simple ARM operation that changes the account type [4]
• the upgrade is free
• changing the storage access tier after the upgrade may result in bill changes [4]
• blob access tiers 
• enable you to choose the most cost-effective storage based on your anticipated usage patterns [4]
• storage account encryption
• all data is automatically encrypted on the service side [1]
• provides three storage services: 
• table storage 
• a NoSQL key/value store
• queue storage 
• a simple queueing service
• blob storage
• used extensively throughout Azure to store things from logs to virtual machine disks [2]
• enables storing files predominantly in three different formats [2]
• ⇐ according to read/write workload [2]
• block blobs 
• optimized for storing text or binary files
• allow for efficient parallel upload/download of a block or list of blocks and modification of a blob at the block granularity [2]
• modifications to an individual blob take a two-phase approach [2]
• {phase 1} one uploads the changes as a set of blocks. 
• {phase 2} one commits the changes by identifying the list of uploaded blocks
• commonly used for files where the typical workload is to read or write the entire file [2]
• e.g. text files, CSVs, and binary files 
• append blobs
• a variant of a block blob that is optimized for append-only write workloads [2]
• e.g. logging
• doesn't allow deleting or updating of existing blocks [2]
• page blobs
• optimized for predominantly random read/write workloads against portions of the blob, where data is stored in pages [2]
• e.g. virtual machine disks
• file structure for a blob in Blob Storage
• container
• logical grouping of blobs
• similar to how folders group files on your local machine [2]
• at the root of the Storage account [2]
• it can be used to set access permissions on the blobs it contains [2]
• within each container can have an unlimited quantity of blobs [2]
• each blob (or more precisely, each container and blob pair) identifies a partition [2]
• each file have in Blob Storage is its own partition [2]
• when creating the Storage account one can define the degree of replication of the data desired for high availability and disaster recovery purposes [2]
• at minimum data stored within a Storage account is replicated on three separate nodes within a single facility (i.e., building)
• {option} locally redundant storage (LRS)
• stores three copies of the data within a facility (which is naturally within a specific geographic region) [2]
• {option} zone-redundant storage (ZRS)
• augments LRS by enabling a replica within another facility within the same region. 
• supports only block blobs [2]
• {option} geo-redundant storage (GRS)
• automatically replicates blob storage to another geographic region that is hundreds of miles away from the primary [2]
• this secondary replica is not readable unless the primary becomes unavailable 
• when this happens, the failover is transparent to your application, but Azure will send you an email notification) [2]
• when new data arrives, that data is first replicated to the three local replicas and then asynchronously replicated to the secondary geographic replica (where it is also replicated three times) [2]
• {option} read-only geo-redundant storage (RA-GRS)
• variant of GRS providing a secondary endpoint that enables reading from the secondary Storage account [2]
• Azure Monitor 
• provides a unified monitoring experience [4]
• stores metrics that include aggregated transaction statistics and capacity data about requests to the storage service [4]
• receives metric data from the Azure Storage [4]

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Resources:
[1] Microsoft Learn (2025) Azure: Storage account overview [link]
[2] Zoiner Tejada (2017) Mastering Azure Analytics 
[3] Microsoft Learn (2025) Azure: Create a storage account [link]

[4] Microsoft Learn (2025) Upgrade to a general-purpose v2 storage account [link]

Resources:

[R1] Microsoft Learn (2025) Fabric: What's new in Microsoft Fabric? [link]

Acronyms:

ARM - Azure Resource Manager 

GRS - Geo-Redundant Storage
LRS - Locally Redundant Storage
RA-GRS - Read-Only Geo-Redundant Storage

ZRS - Zone-Redundant Storage