Windows Azure Data Storage

INTRODUCTION TO WINDOWS AZURE DATA STORAGE xiii

CHAPTER 1: FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS 1

Business Scenarios for Storage 1

NoSQL 2

Big Data 4

Relational Data 6

Backup and Recovery 7

Messaging 9

Setting Up an Azure Data Storage Account 10

Summary 12

CHAPTER 2: TABLE STORAGE 13

Designing Table Storage 13

Defi ning Table Storage 16

Operating on Table Storage 22

Summary 29

CHAPTER 3: BLOB STORAGE 30

Why Blob Storage? 30

Different Types of Blobs 32

Page Blob 32

Block Blobs 33

Working with Blob Storage 33

Creating Blobs 33

Metadata for Your Blobs 38

Updating and Deleting Blobs 40

Summary 43

CHAPTER 4: QUEUE STORAGE 44

Why Use Queues? 44

Decoupling 44

Scalability 46

Extensibility 47

Queue Storage vs. Service Bus 47

Total Queue Size 48

Flexible Leasing 48

Message Modification 49

Logging and Metrics 49

Using Queue Storage 50

Manipulating the Message 54

The Message Lifecycle 58

Idempotency 59

Message Deletion 60

Summary 61

CHAPTER 5: SERVICE BUS 62

The High-Level View 62

Brokered Message 62

Queue Entity 64

Topic Entity 64

Subscription Entity 65

Why Use Service Bus for Queues 66

Greater Flexibility 66

Message Retrieval Mechanism 67

Service Bus in Action 67

The Dead Letter Queue 76

Queues in Service Bus 80

Additional Features 83

Sessions 83

Transactions 85

Duplicate Detection 86

Relay Messaging 87

Summary 87

CHAPTER 6: LOCAL STORAGE 88

Local Storage 88

Web and Worker Roles 88

File Access for Web/Worker Roles 89

Additional Considerations 96

Summary 97

CHAPTER 7: RELATIONAL DATA 98

WASD Architecture 98

Azure SQL Databases vs SQL on Azure Virtual Machines 100

Creating an Azure SQL Database 103

Deploying SQL Server Onto an Azure VM 106

Configuring for Client Access 107

Managing Azure SQL Databases 110

Allowed IP Addresses 110

Using the Azure Management Portal 112

Using SQL Server Management Studio 117

Database Sharding in WASD 119

Creating a Federation 120

Summary 121

CHAPTER 8: DATA BACKUP AND ARCHIVING 122

StorSimple 122

StorSimple Architecture 123

Integration with Azure 125

Data Recovery for SQL Azure 131

Database Copy 131

SQL Database Import Export Service 132

Recommended Strategy 134

Summary 134

CHAPTER 9: SQL DATA SYNC 135

SQL Data Sync 135

Microsoft Synchronization Framework 136

Configuring SQL Data Sync 137

Defining a Sync Group 137

Defining the Sync Rules 143

Defining the Sync Settings 145

Setting Up a Sync Agent 146

Defining a Sync Agent to SQL Data Sync 147

Summary 149