Azure Storage

In the Ultra Transcenders books

DP-900SC-200AZ-400

Each book explains Azure Storage in context, with comparison tables and the common traps.

Terms in this definition

• General-purpose v1

  The older storage account kind (Storage), which lacks access tiers, Archive and premium file shares and retires on 13 October 2026. Converting to ZRS requires first upgrading to GPv2, a one-way change.

• Storage account

  The top-level resource in Azure Storage, giving a unique namespace for table, queue, file and blob data. Location, performance and kind are set when it is created and cannot change.

• Data lake

  Holds files of every kind, structured, semi-structured or unstructured, usually spread over a distributed file system, and lets engines like Spark apply a schema when reading. In Azure this is Data Lake Storage: Blob Storage with a hierarchical namespace enabled.

Related terms

• ADLS

  Paths beginning abfss:// point into this: Azure Storage with the hierarchical namespace switched on. In Unity Catalog it is typically the object store under both external locations and managed storage.

• Azure Private Link

  Azure capability placing PaaS services such as Azure Storage behind a private endpoint in your VNet. Traffic stays on the Microsoft backbone with no public IP involved, though VNet and DNS configuration are required.

• Azure Storage Mover

  Managed migration of folders and files into Azure Storage from on-premises shares or other clouds, with many migrations controlled from a single resource. Microsoft recommends it when moving lots of data.

• Custom Script Extension

  Runs PowerShell or Bash scripts on a VM after pulling them from GitHub, Azure Storage or another location the VM can reach; a common use is installing NGINX or IIS.

• E2E

  End to end. Among Azure Storage metrics, SuccessE2ELatency covers a request's whole round trip including the client network, whereas SuccessServerLatency counts only the time Azure Storage spends processing it.

• Ephemeral OS disk

  An OS disk held on the VM host's local storage instead of Azure Storage. It keeps no state across redeploys or resizes, can't be stopped and deallocated, and isn't supported by Azure Backup, Site Recovery or ADE.

• Import/Export

  Azure Import/Export lets you ship disks so data can be loaded into or exported from Azure storage as a one-off; it is not meant for continuous ingestion.

• Knowledge store

  Property of an Azure AI Search skillset that uses projections to save enriched output into Azure Storage tables and blobs, so it can be analysed outside the search index.