In an era of rapid digital expansion, ensuring seamless access to product images, videos, and marketing literature is crucial for customer engagement. With a global customer base demanding fast load times and reliable access, a robust cloud storage solution is essential. This guide outlines how to create and manage a high-availability storage system with version control and recovery options.
By completing this task, you will have developed essential skills in:
- Create a storage account with high availability.
- Ensure the storage account has anonymous public access.
- Create a blob storage container for the website documents.
- Enable soft delete so files can be easily restored.
- Enable blob versioning.
Setting Up High-Availability Storage
The first step is to create a storage account designed to support public website content while ensuring redundancy to mitigate regional outages.
Steps to Create a Storage Account
- Navigate to the Azure portal and search for Storage accounts.
- Click + Create.
- Set the Storage account name to publicwebsite, ensuring uniqueness.
- Accept default settings and click Review and then Create.
Configuring Redundancy for High Availability
To ensure high availability, enable Read-access Geo-redundant Storage (RA-GRS):
- In Data management, select Redundancy.
- Choose Read-access Geo-redundant storage (RA-GRS).
- Review primary and secondary locations to verify setup.
Enabling Public Access
For a seamless customer experience, public website content should be accessible without login requirements.
- In Settings, select Configuration.
- Enable Allow blob anonymous access.
- Click Save to apply changes.
Creating and Configuring a Blob Storage Container
A dedicated blob storage container ensures that images and documents are organized and publicly accessible.
Creating a Public Storage Container
- In Data storage, navigate to Containers.
- Click + Container and name it public.
- Click Create.
Enabling Anonymous Read Access
- Select the public container.
- In Overview, choose Change access level.
- Set Public access level to Blob (anonymous read access for blobs only).
- Click OK.
Uploading and Testing Access
- Open the public container and click Upload.
- Select a small image or text file and upload it.
- Copy the file’s URL from the Overview tab.
- Open the URL in a browser to verify public access.
Implementing Soft Delete for Data Recovery
To prevent accidental loss of critical files, soft delete must be enabled with a retention period.
Enabling Soft Delete
- Navigate to Overview in the storage account.
- Under Blob service, select Blob soft delete.
- Check Enable soft delete for blobs.
- Set Retention period to 21 days.
- Click Save.
Testing Soft Delete and Restore
Delete an uploaded file from the public container.
Enable Show deleted blobs in the container’s Overview page.
- Locate the deleted file and restore it using the Undelete option.
- Refresh the container to confirm the file restoration.
Enabling Blob Versioning for Document tracking and version control ensures that previous file versions can be recovered if needed.
Enabling Blob Versioning
- Navigate to Overview in the storage account.
- In Blob service, select Versioning.
- Check Enable versioning for blobs.
- Click Save.
Testing Blob Versioning
- Upload a new version of an existing file to the public container.
- View previous file versions in the Show deleted blobs section.
- Restore a previous version as needed.
Final Thoughts
By implementing these cloud storage strategies, businesses can ensure:
- High availability to handle regional outages.
- Seamless global access with anonymous public access settings.
- Robust data recovery through soft delete and versioning.
This setup guarantees a fast, secure, and reliable content delivery system, enabling businesses to scale their digital presence efficiently.
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