Microsoft Azure Cloud Services

Posted by Aleks Yenin

The question of data storage is one of the most important nowadays. A common pattern in most companies is working on some working set of data that is reasonably placed in the local repository. The rest of the data volume is most profitable to be placed and processed in the cloud, thus reducing costs.

One of the solutions that makes it possible is to store data in the cloud such as Microsoft Azure.

Azure cloud services are available in 89 markets, with around the clock support. The important question of data storage is whether it is safe and reliable. In Azure cloud, any data item is stored at least three times, no matter what type of data this is. In addition, all data is stored on the primary and secondary storages that are geographically separated.

One of the unique services Azure offers is StorSimple that allows to expand your storage into Azure cloud. This service automatically archives unused data in the cloud and saves locally only the most frequently used data. The data that you use often will be stored on the local SSD disks, the data that is less necessary – on HDD disks, and data which is rarely used – in Azure cloud.

It is also worth mentioning that Azure provides developers with first-class support for integration with all popular languages, platforms and development tools, as well as a portal to monitor and manage their services.

As for security, all traffic is transmitted and stored in encrypted form. In order to provide quick access to data, the data that is often requested from Azure storage can be cached.