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If I create and attach a 200GB VHD to my Azure Virtual Machine and only consume 15GB of this drive, am I charged for the full 200GB or the 15GB?
VHD's are persisted as page blobs and so you are charged for the space consumed in the blob.
From this:
https://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/pricing/details/#storage
For Windows Azure Drive storage, you will be billed only for the storage space used by the page blob and the read/write transactions to the page blob. You will not be charged for read transactions that utilize the local drive cache. Windows Azure Drive usage is billed at the same rates as standard Windows Azure Storage and is included with Windows Azure Storage usage in your bill. There is not a separate line item for Windows Azure Drive on your bill.
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I have a VM that currently has the OS disk in Premium Storage -- I'd prefer that it use Standard Storage and my data disks use Premium Storage. That said, is there an easy method to move the existing VHD from Premium to Standard?
You will need to
delete the VM while preserving the disks
use AzCopy to copy the OS disk to Standard Storage
create a Premium Storage capable VM using the copied disk
This may be more trouble than it is worth. You can likely script it by downloading the configuration prior to deletion, doing the copy, then modify the configuration and create the new VM.
Jdixon04,
We published an article which outlines step by step guide to migrate to Premium Storage here (https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/storage-migration-to-premium-storage/). There is also a sample script at the end of the article if you wish to automate the flow. If you have multiple VMs to migrate, automation through PowerShell scripts will be helpful. Let us know if you need additional information.
Aung
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I have a website in Azure which advertises my software. Users can download my software file which is about 100Mb. Right now I'm putting this file in a folder in the Visual Studio project as a content file and publishing it along with the other project files.
Would moving the download files to Azure Blob Storage give faster download speeds than my current approach?
Geo-redundant blobs are replicated to a secondary datacentre, but unless you use "Read-Access Geo-Redundant Storage" the blob will only be served from the primary data centre. With RA-GRS you can optionally access the secondary via a different domain, but this will not improve latency for users outside your region.
For best download performance and scalability, store your file in blob storage and cache it close to your users with Azure CDN.
With the file in blob storage you can also get it geo-replicated, so that it's closer to your user. You can also setup a CDN endpoint to that blob storage.
And it will at least make your deployment a lost faster since you will not need to upload the 100MB file ;) (yes, I know, web deploy does not upload unmodified files, so that's not always the case)
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Please correct my wrongs. From my reading on the topic so far, it appears to me that both, Azure Blob Storage and File Service offer the ability to store file(s) and folder(s) (I understand that blobs can store any binary object, but any serialized binary stream is just a file at the end of the day) in a hierarchical structure that mimics a file system.
Only the API to access them are slightly different in that the File Service allows you to query the source using Win32 File I/O like functions as well in addition to using the REST API.
Why would you choose one over another if you wanted your application to store some files owned by your application's users?
A few items for your question:
You can't mount Azure Blob Storage as a native share on a virtual machine.
Azure Blob Storage isn't hierarchical beyond containers. You can add files that have / or \ characters in them that are interpreted as folders by many apps that read blob storage.
Azure File Service provides a SMB protocol interface to Azure Blob Storage which solves the problem with (1).
If you are developing a new application then leverage the native Azure API directly into Blob Storage.
If you are porting an existing application that needs to share files then use Azure File Service.
Note that there are a few SMB protocol features that Azure File Service doesn't support.
A few other things to consider:
Pricing: Blob storage is much cheaper than file storage.
Portability: With blob storage if you decide to migrate to a diff platform in future you may have to change your app code but with File storage you can migrate your app to any other platform that supports SMB (assuming you are using native file system APIs in your app)
Azure File Service is targeted more to internal file handling. With internal I mean mounting a directory to a VM in the cloud or on-premises so it can be loaded in you back-end (SMB based protocol).
For sharing files with end-users (web or apps) it probably makes more sense to use blob storage as this simplifies downloading through a URL and securing download through Shared Access Signatures.
This post shares more details on the comparison (at the bottom): https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/windowsazurestorage/2014/05/12/introducing-microsoft-azure-file-service/
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My linux vm on windows azure has a 300 gb data disk attached to it and when I try to delete it, I get an error in portal says the disk is not attached to. In the azure portal I still see the data disk is attached to linux vm but can not delete it.
Does any one see the same problem?
To delete a data disk from Windows Azure VM you would need to follow the given steps:
Identify where your Data Disk is physically located in specific Windows Azure Storage name and container and keep it
Now log into your Windows Azure VM (Linux/Windows) and unmount the data disk
After that you would need to detach the Data disk from Windows Azure VM configuration and this can be done via portal or using Powershell commands
After you detach the data disk from Windows Azure VM configuration the data disk is still listed at Virtual Machines -> Disks (Disk Type - Data Disk) section so go ahead select your specific Data Disk from the list and Delete it.
Step #4 will remove the VHD lease and the Data Disk will not be listed anymore in Virtual Machines -> Disks section however the VHD is still taking precious space in your Windows Azure Storage so you would need to remove it to reclaim the space.
To delete the VHD permanently, visit to Windows Azure Storage (you identified in step #1) using 3rd Party Azure Storage tools or any other method and then delete the VHD permanently.
Please try above steps and this should delete your Data disk from Windows Azure VM.
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I'm looking for the best way to prevent accidental deletion by IT - perhaps copying to disk or a separate Azure Storage account or Amazon. What tools can do this? Redgate Cloud Services seems like the closest fit for what I want but it seems to require config per container. I know of some other tools like Cloud Storage Studio and Azure Sync Tool exist but I don't think they support scheduled backups of blob storage.
Windows Azure storage is backed up Geo-replication which means there are total 6 copies of your data at any given time. There is no built-in service available in Windows Azure to backup data on Azure Storage to outside Azure Storage or user defined location.
Windows Azure Azure is manged by RESTful interface so 3rd party vendors have created application for such purposes. Besides above I had chance to use Gladinet Cloud Backup solution could be useful in your case. Based on my experience, there are a few backup tools available however and not a single one perfect to match everybody expectation.
A cheap way to prevent accidental deletion by IT is to snapshot the blobs into a backup container. IT would have to be very persistent and delete all of the snapshots taken of the original blob in order to accidentally delete it.
"A blob that has snapshots cannot be deleted unless the snapshots are also deleted. You can delete a snapshot individually, or tell the storage service to delete all snapshots when deleting the source blob. If you attempt to delete a blob that still has snapshots, your call will return an error."
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/hh488361
CloudBerry Backup: it supports Amazon S3, Azure, Google, and much more cloud storage providers
http://www.cloudberrylab.com/amazon-s3-microsoft-azure-google-storage-online-backup.aspx