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 |
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. |
