Cloud Pro: Azure Storage: Choose, Compare and Launch

What's inside

1. Level 1: Every Azure Storage Service on One PageFree
   Learners put every Azure storage, transfer and backup service on one map, grouped as object, block, file, high-performance file, archive, data transfer and backup, with current and former names such as Data Lake Storage Gen2, now Azure Data Lake Storage.
2. Level 2: The Standard Data ProfileFree
   Learners build a reusable data profile that records a workload's size and growth, access type and protocol, performance needs, access pattern, durability, consistency, sharing, retention, residency and cost model, so every later service can be scored against it.
3. Level 3: Blob Storage: Hot and Cool Tiers
   Learners see what Blob Storage is, where it fits and where it does not, how its account and blob limits bite, and how the hot and cool tiers trade capacity price against transaction cost and minimum storage duration.
4. Level 4: Blob Storage: Cold, Archive and Rehydration
   Learners extend tiering to the cold and archive tiers, including offline archive behaviour, rehydration priorities and times, retrieval charges and minimum durations, and judge when archiving actually saves money.
5. Level 5: Blob Storage Quick Start and Clean-up
   Learners deploy the smallest working Blob setup with the Azure CLI and with Bicep or Terraform, upload and tier objects, review what they operate versus what Microsoft operates, then remove everything cleanly.
6. Level 6: Azure Data Lake Storage
   Learners see how turning on the hierarchical namespace makes a storage account into Azure Data Lake Storage, what that adds (directories, POSIX-style ACLs, fast renames), what it costs, and which Blob features it limits.
7. Level 7: Redundancy Options: LRS, ZRS, GRS, GZRS
   Learners compare locally redundant, zone-redundant, geo-redundant and geo-zone-redundant storage, including the read-access variants, on durability, availability, failure scope, cost and which services support each option.
8. Level 8: Queue and Table Storage in Brief
   Learners cover Queue Storage and Table Storage briefly: what each does, their limits on message size, retention, throughput and partitions, how they are billed, and when Service Bus or Cosmos DB is the better choice.
9. Level 9: Azure Files over SMB
   Learners see how Azure Files serves fully managed SMB shares: identity-based access with AD DS or Entra ID, snapshots, share and file limits, SSD versus HDD media, and where SMB shares fit or fall short compared with other options.
10. Level 10: Azure Files over NFS and Its Billing Models
    Learners deploy NFS Azure file shares on SSD and compare the provisioned v2, provisioned v1 and pay-as-you-go billing models, including how storage, IOPS and throughput are provisioned separately in v2 and which media and protocol combinations each model supports.
11. Level 11: Azure File Sync
    Learners use Azure File Sync to cache Azure file shares on Windows Servers, covering sync groups, cloud tiering, recall behaviour, scale limits and the costs of running a hybrid file estate.
12. Level 12: Azure NetApp Files
    Learners judge Azure NetApp Files for enterprise NFS, SMB and dual-protocol workloads: the NetApp account, capacity pool and volume hierarchy, service levels, throughput per TiB, minimum sizes, snapshots and replication, and when its higher price is worth paying.
13. Level 13: Azure Managed Lustre
    Learners assess Azure Managed Lustre as a parallel file system for HPC and AI training, covering throughput tiers, minimum file system sizes, Blob integration for import and export, client requirements, and how to keep costs under control.
14. Level 14: Managed Disks: Standard HDD, Standard SSD, Premium SSD
    Learners cover the disk types sized in fixed tiers: Standard HDD, Standard SSD and Premium SSD. That includes how disk size sets IOPS and throughput, bursting, VM-level caps, disk redundancy and when shared disks are worth using.
15. Level 15: Managed Disks: Premium SSD v2 and Ultra Disk
    Learners compare Premium SSD v2 and Ultra Disk, where capacity, IOPS and throughput are set separately and can be changed on the fly, along with their regional, zonal, caching and VM restrictions.
16. Level 16: Azure Elastic SAN
    Learners assess Azure Elastic SAN as shared iSCSI block storage: SAN, volume group and volume structure, base versus capacity-only units, shared performance, networking and when consolidating storage beats buying disks one by one.
17. Level 17: Azure Container Storage
    Learners use Azure Container Storage to provide persistent volumes for AKS, comparing its local NVMe and Elastic SAN storage types with the plain Azure Disk and Azure Files CSI drivers, and weighing version support and data durability.
18. Level 18: AzCopy
    Learners use AzCopy for fast copy and sync between local storage, Blob, Files and other clouds, covering authentication options, concurrency and throughput tuning, job resume and the transaction and egress costs a large copy creates.
19. Level 19: Azure Storage Mover
    Learners use Azure Storage Mover to plan and run managed online migrations from NFS and SMB sources into Azure Blob and Azure Files, with agents, projects, job definitions and repeat copies tracked from Azure.
20. Level 20: Azure Data Box Family
    Learners decide when to ship data offline with Data Box Disk or the next-generation Data Box devices (120 TB and 525 TB usable), covering the order-to-upload workflow, device limits, fees and timelines, and the retired models to avoid.
21. Level 21: Azure Backup: Vaults, Policies and Restores
    Learn what Azure Backup protects across blobs, Azure Files, Managed Disks and VMs, how operational and vaulted backups differ, and what the vaults, policies, storage costs and restore paths mean for a workload.
22. Level 22: Redundancy and Disaster Recovery Across Services
    Turn RPO and RTO targets into a disaster recovery design across Blob, Files, NetApp Files, Disks and Elastic SAN, combining redundancy, failover, replication and backup.
23. Level 23: Security, Encryption and Access Control
    Lock down storage with Entra ID RBAC instead of shared keys, private endpoints, customer-managed keys, immutability and threat detection, and see which controls apply to which service.
24. Level 24: Lifecycle Management and Automated Tiering
    Automate the movement and deletion of data across tiers using lifecycle policies, last-access tracking and service-specific cool tiers, without triggering early-deletion or rehydration surprises.
25. Level 25: A Worked Total Cost of Ownership
    Build a complete, dated cost model for a real workload that includes capacity, operations, retrieval, redundancy, egress, backup, minimum durations and reservations, not just the per-GB price.
26. Level 26: Fair Benchmarking of Storage Performance
    Design and run storage benchmarks that produce honest, repeatable numbers by controlling block size, queue depth, warm-up, caching and the VM and network limits that cap results.
27. Level 27: Planning and Running a Storage Migration
    Plan a full migration end to end: assess the source, choose online or offline transfer from bandwidth arithmetic, run in waves, validate the data and cut over with a rollback plan.
28. Level 28: Building a Weighted Selection Scorecard
    Turn the standard data profile into a weighted scorecard that ranks the candidate Azure storage services for a workload and makes the trade-offs visible and defensible.
29. Level 29: Scoring Azure Against Another Cloud
    Compare the chosen Azure service with its closest equivalent on another cloud using the same scorecard, dated documentation and like-for-like prices and limits.
30. Level 30: Final Challenge: Decision Workshop and Selection Record Exam
    Apply the whole course to a realistic multi-workload brief: profile the data, shortlist and score services, design redundancy, security, lifecycle, backup and migration, cost it, and defend the result in a one-page selection record.

Access

The first 2 levels are free with a free account. Every level, the podcast edition and the AI tutor come with All Access at £4.99/month or any Creator plan — see pricing.

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