I am trying to access logs in Azure blob storage. Here I saw I can use both Resources API and Storage Services API to access them.
Can somebody please explain the advantages and disadvantages of using one over another.
That APIs have different purpose:
Azure Storage Resource Provider REST API we should use for managing storage like a resource. You can see all your resources in this link: Azure resources
Azure storage Service REST API we use for managing like a service. If you take a look that have a different method to manage.
Also, you can give to user different roles for user. And you have a to control who can do and what.
Related
I am consuming the Azure Face API (Detection and Find Similars), but I do not see any documentation that explains how to access the stored data in the Azure's platform (in the UI of the Azure's website).
According to this, only facial templates are stored. But, how can I see them? Are these resources accessible for devs? Any other data stored?
By default, we can access the data with blob storage as the default storage in azure portal. By default, blob storage cannot be accessed in the public manner. It will be private, and we need to have it accessed publicly. Using the shared access signature (SAS) we can provide secured access to the resources in storage account.
Use the below procedure to get the SAS token and access them in API calls.
Is there a way to get properties of a storage account, specifically the kind of account - GPv1, GPv2 or blob storage, through an API in Storage Services?
I came across https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/azure/ee460802.aspx but if possible, I would like to re-use the SharedKey authentication I use for the Blob Service APIs.
In this page, https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/rest/api/storageservices/ I found this:
"All access to storage services takes place through the storage account. The storage account is the highest level of the namespace for accessing each of the fundamental services. It is also the basis for authentication.+
The REST APIs for storage services expose the storage account as a resource."
How would I get properties of that resource? I played around with setting the restype to storage account, similar to "container" and "table", but could not access it.
When it comes to managing storage accounts, there are two REST APIs:
Storage Service REST API: This API is used to manage the data in the storage accounts. This makes use of account name and access key (also known as storage account key). You can find more details about this API here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/rest/api/storageservices/.
Storage Resource Provider (SRP) REST API: This API is used to manage storage accounts. You can use this API to create, update, delete storage accounts, regenerate account keys and get information about the storage account themselves. This makes use of Azure AD for authentication and authorization. You can find more details about this API here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/rest/api/storagerp/.
Now coming to your question, you can't really use Storage Service REST API to find information about the type of storage account. You would need to use Storage Resource Provider API to find this information. In particular you will be consuming Get Properties SRP API to find this information.
How do I build a rich storage ACL policy system with Azure storage?
I want to have a blob container that has the following users:
public - read-only against some set of blobs
Uploader - read-write against some subset of blob names, these keys are shared out to semi-trusted build machines
shared admin - full capabilities against this blob subset
Ideally these users are accounts driven through Azure AD, so I can use the full directory service power with them... :)
My understanding of shared access keys is that they are (1) time-limited and (2) have to be created with hand-tooled code. My desire is that I can do something similar to AWS IAM policies on S3... :-)
Thing like AWS IAM Policies for S3 does not exist for Azure Blob Storage today. Azure recently started a Role Based Access Control (RBAC) and is available for Azure Storage but it is limited to performing management activities only like creating storage accounts etc. It is yet not available for perform data management activities like uploading blobs etc.
You may want to look at Azure Rights Management Service (Azure RMS) and see if it is a right solution for your needs. If you search for Azure RMS Blob you will find one of the search results link to a PDF file which talks about securing blob storage with this service (the link directly downloads the PDF file and hence I could not include it here).
If you're looking for a 3rd party service to do this, do take a look at the "Team Edition" of Cloud Portam (a service I am building currently). We recently released the Team Edition. In short, Cloud Portam is a browser-based Azure Explorer and it supports managing Azure Storage, Search Service and DocumentDB accounts. The Team Edition makes use of your Azure AD for user authentication and you can grant permissions (None, Read-Only, Read-Write and Read-Write-Delete) on the Azure resources you manage through this application.
Paul,
While Gaurav is correct in that Azure Storage does not have AD integration today, I wanted to point out a couple of things about shared access signatures from your post:
My understanding of shared access keys is that they are (1) time-limited and (2) have to be created with hand-tooled code
1) A sas token/uri does not need to have an expiry date on it (it's an optional field), so in that sense they are not time-limited and need not be regenerated unless you change the shared key with which you generated the token
2) You can use PS cmdlets to do this for e.g.: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn806416.aspx. Some storage explorers also support creation of sas tokens/uris statically without you having to write code for it.
Is there a service or a(n open-source) library that could help in programmatically manage files stored on Azure blob storage. By manage I mean search with security trimming, authorizing download, document-versioning.
I've looked online but most of the solutions are more of end-user solutions. Should I build my own layer to talk to blob storage or there's a way that can take a part of this burden off my shoulders?
A solution that could work with both cloud (blob) and on-premise storage would be great!
I am not aware of any such library. That being said the storage platform does include the underlying capabilities upon which you could implement these features. For example, for authorizing access to objects you could issue SAS tokens to authorized users. For document versioning you can create snapshots on objects etc.
I'm trying to get up-and-going with Windows Azure. I understand that I need to create a "Storage Account". However, what I'm confused about is, how I should set it up. For instance, my Azure subscription is set to my company name. I intend to have multiple ASP.NET web applications (web roles) associated with my subscription. Each web application will have its own database.
My question is, should each web application have its own storage account? Or should only one storage account be used for all of my projects?
Thank you!
There's no one way to answer this, but here are some thoughts to help your decision:
Each storage account is limited to 100TB. If you feel that you will push the limits of this across multiple websites, then create multiple storage accounts for sure.
To make billing easier, I'd suggest separate storage accounts
Storage accounts have an SLA of a few thousand transactions per second across the entire storage account. For performance purposes, it's probably better to have separate storage accounts
Consider putting your diagnostic data in a separate storage account. This way, you can safely give your Storage Account key to a 3rd-party like ParaLeap (creators of AzureWatch) for monitoring your app, while not giving away the key to real customer data, for instance.
If you need more than 5 storage accounts, you'll need to contact Customer Support to increase this number.
Windows Azure Storage server is for simple blob storage. This is for when your app needs a file store. Any application, not just Azure web roles, can target a storage service. It's kind of like Amazon S3 if you're familiar with that.
Storage services are not required to run Azure applications. You just need a "compute" instance.