Account types – Azure AZ-104 Exam

Account types

There are three possible storage account types for the Standard tier: StorageV2 (General- Purpose V2), Storage (General-Purpose V1), and BlobStorage. There are four possible storage account types for the Premium tier: StorageV2 (General-Purpose V2), Storage (General- Purpose V1), BlockBlobStorage, and FileStorage. Table 2-1 shows the features for each kind of account. Key points to remember are

• The Blob Storage account is a specialized storage account used to store Block Blobs and Append Blobs. You can’t store Page Blobs in these accounts; therefore, you can’t use them for unmanaged disks.
• Only General-Purpose V2 and Blob Storage accounts support the Hot, Cool, and Archive access tiers.

General-Purpose V1 and Blob Storage accounts can both be upgraded to a General-Purpose V2 account. This operation is irreversible. No other changes to the account kind are supported.

TABLE 2-1 Storage account types and their supported features

	General- Purpose V2	General- Purpose V1	Blob Storage	Block Blob Storage	File Storage
Services supported	Blob, File, Queue, Table	Blob, File, Queue, Table	Blob (Block Blobs and Append Blobs only)	Blob (Block Blobs and Append Blobs only)	File only
Unmanaged Disk (Page Blob) support	Yes	Yes	No	No	No

	General- Purpose V2	General- Purpose V1	Blob Storage	Block Blob Storage	File Storage
Supported Performance Tiers	Standard Premium	Standard Premium	Standard	Premium	Premium
Supported Access Tiers	Hot, Cool, Archive	N/A	Hot, Cool, Archive	N/A	N/A
Replication Options	LRS, ZRS, GRS, RA-GRS, GZRS, RA-GZRS	LRS, GRS, RA-GRS	LRS, GRS, RA-GRS	LRS, ZRS	LRS, ZRS

Replication options

When you create a storage account, you can also specify how your data will be replicated for redundancy and resistance to failure. There are four options, as described in Table 2-2.

TABLE 2-2 Storage account replication options

Replication Type	Description
Locally redundant storage (LRS)	Makes three synchronous copies of your data within a single datacenter. Available for General-Purpose or Blob Storage accounts, at both the Standard and Premium Performance tiers.
Zone redundant storage (ZRS)	Makes three synchronous copies to three separate availability zones within a single region. Available for General-Purpose V2 storage accounts only, at the Standard Performance tier only. Also available for Block Blob Storage and File Storage accounts.
Geographically redundant storage (GRS)	This is the same as LRS (three local synchronous copies), plus three additional asynchronous copies to a second Azure region hundreds of miles away from the primary region. Data replication typically occurs within 15 minutes, although no SLA is provided. Available for General-Purpose or Blob Storage accounts, at the Standard Performance tier only.
Read access geographically redundant storage (RA-GRS)	This has the same capabilities as GRS, plus you have read-only access to the data in the secondary data center. Available for General-Purpose or Blob Storage accounts, at the Standard Performance tier only.
Geographically zone redundant storage (GZRS)	This is the same as ZRS (three synchronous copies across multiple availability zones in the selected region), plus three additional asynchronous copies to a different Azure region hundreds of miles away from the primary region. Data replication typically occurs within 15 minutes, although no SLA is provided. Available for General-Purpose v2 storage accounts only, at the Standard Performance tier only.
Read access geographically zone redundant storage (RA-GZRS)	This has the same capabilities as GZRS, plus you have read-only access to the data in the secondary data center. Available for General-Purpose V2 storage accounts only, at the Standard Performance tier only.