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KM2 - Mobile and Operating System Revision

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L3 IT, Software, Web and Telecoms Survey

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Web survey powered by SurveyMonkey.com. Create your own online survey now with SurveyMonkey's expert certified FREE templates.

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Web survey powered by SurveyMonkey.com. Create your own online survey now with SurveyMonkey's expert certified FREE templates.

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https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=mjMp-VqUwkuqIhIobtKDKjNSAnM7MPRHjoB-dKy4pytUNFE4STBERFhENkVCQUo3UEcyU0ZKNUFOTC4u

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Social Engineer

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RL

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https://www.bbc.co.uk/diversity/newsandevents/hackathon

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Azure geo-redundant storage explained - Useful Link 

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Azure geo-redundant storage explained - Useful Link 

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Microsoft Azure storage offers numerous type of availability and durability of the data, within the datacenter, across datacenters, within the same region, or across regions. Based on your needs, you can select the right replication methodology. For example, if you would like to save your data from catastrophic failure in a single region then choose replication option that supports replication across regions.

Please keep in mind that you can configure replication options when you are creating a storage account and each region doesn't support all replication options. Microsoft Azure offers four different replication options.

LRS: Locally redundant storage

ZRS: Zone-redundant storage

GRS: Geo-redundant storage

RA-GRS: Read-access geo-redundant storage

Table below provides you a quick overview about differences between all four replication options.

Let me explain you all four replication options in detail.

Locally redundant storage: maintains three copies of your data. It replicates your data within a scale unit, which is hosted in a datacenter in the region in which you create your storage account. A scale unit is nothing but a set of multiple racks, which hosts storage nodes. To maintain high availability, these replicas reside in separate fault domains and update domain. A fault domain is nothing but a group of nodes, which belongs to a single point of failure. While an update domain is a group of nodes that can be upgraded at the same time. LRS is cost effective solution but doesn't safeguard your data from datacenter level failure.

Zone-redundant storage: maintains three copies of your data. ZRS is little confusing as of now because of its two versions. ZRS is in preview, which falls under general purpose v2 storage accounts, it replicates data synchronously across multiple availability zones with in a region and very useful for highly available applications. While the existing or old ZRS capability is now referred to as ZRS classic, which falls under general purpose v1 storage accounts. ZRS classic replicates data asynchronously three times across two to three facilities within same region or in some cases across two regions. ZRS classic are planned to depreciate by March 2021 and once new ZRS generally available in a region then ZRS classic can't be created.

Geo-redundant storage: maintains six copies of your data. It replicates three copies in one region and another three copies in another region. In primary region, it replicates your data within a scale unit, which is hosted in a datacenter in the region in which you create your storage account. A scale unit is nothing but a set of multiple racks, which hosts storage nodes. To maintain high availability, these replicas reside in separate fault domains and update domain just like LRS. While in secondary region also it does the same thing but between the region data replication take place in asynchronous mode. Your data doesn't become available in case of primary region failure, until Microsoft initiates the failover. Primary and secondary region association is pre-defined based on the locations and can't be changes manually. Once you create a storage account, you just need to specify your primary azure region. Here is the list of primary and their respective secondary regions.

Read-access geo-redundant storage: maintains six copies of your data. It replicates three copies in one region and another three copies in another region. In primary region, it replicates your data within a scale unit, which is hosted in a datacenter in the region in which you create your storage account. A scale unit is nothing but a set of multiple racks, which hosts storage nodes. To maintain high availability, these replicas reside in separate fault domains and update domain just like LRS. While in secondary region also it does the same thing but between the region data replication take place in asynchronous mode. In case of RA-GRS, your data is available in read mode always, even in case of primary region failure. However, you can't get write access on your data from secondary region until Microsoft initiates the failover. Primary and secondary region association is pre-defined based on the locations and can't be changes manually like GRS. Once you create a storage account, you just need to specify your primary azure region.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Microsoft Azure storage offers numerous type of availability and durability of the data, within the datacenter, across datacenters, within the same region, or across regions. Based on your needs, you can select the right replication methodology. For example, if you would like to save your data from catastrophic failure in a single region then choose replication option that supports replication across regions.

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Azure storage types explained - useful linkes

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Azure storage types explained - useful linkes

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Microsoft Azure Cloud offers several types of scalable, high-availability storage: for tables, queues, files, blobs and Azure virtual machine disks. But what does it all really mean?

Even for an IT-specialist, it is not that easy to determine the best solution for the corporate requirements and environment. In this article, we will provide a definition for each of the Microsoft Azure storage types and give examples.

Microsoft Azure Storage

All storage providers from the "big 3" (Amazon, Google and Microsoft) develop their own structure and naming for the storage and Microsoft is no exception. To start working with Microsoft Azure Storage, you need to:

Define the need in the storage

Get an account in Azure

Choose your storage account type

Choose your storage type, depending on the storage account type

Choose your redundancy level, depending on the storage type

In Microsoft Azure, there are two types of storage accounts, five types of storage, four levels of redundancy, and three tiers for storing your files.

In this article, we will overview each storage type, that exists on the Microsoft Azure platform and discuss possible options for usage for the given storage type. Our main goal for the article is to create clear view for the over-complicated at first sight, Microsoft Azure Storage.

Storage Types

The basis of Microsoft Azure Storage is, of course, the storage type you need to choose. The type is defining how you store what and which options and features you can use. There are five storage types in Microsoft Azure and they can be divided into two groups by their design. One group is designed with file storage, scalability and communication in mind and is accessible via REST API. The other - to enhance the features of Microsoft Azure Virtual Machine environment and to be accessed from VMs exclusively.
However, things are not so simple.
Blob Storage
Blob is a file
It all has begun with Blob Storage in Microsoft Azure. BLOB is an acronym and means Binary Large OBject. Blob. To put it in plain English, blob is a file. Thus, Microsoft Azure Blob Storage is a storage for your files.

Blobs can be stored in Azure in three different ways:

Block Blob

Good for file storage, are capable of 4.77 TB per file

When you store a file in block blob - that means that it arrives on the storage in small parts and only after you complete the upload - the file/blob puts itself together in one peace. With that architecture, file cannot be modified without a complete re-upload. This is the most basic and the cheapest way to store your files in Azure.

You may wonder - why is it called block blob storage? Such name was given due to the specific architecture of the allocation of the files inside Microsoft's datacenters. When you upload your file to the storage - it is shown to you as a whole, but in fact, each file is divided into separate parts, called blocks. That architecture was proposed a long time ago and it ensures the fast and lossless file upload.

You can have access to the files, but cannot change them inside the storage. Thus Block Blobs are ideal for backups and storing user files. Previously, the size of one blob (one file) could not be bigger than 200GB. If 200GB per file were okay in the year of 2007, it's considered too small in 2017. So Azure has updated the limit to be equal to 4.77 TB per blob.

Append Blobs

Good for storing logs or meta-data, you need to update constantly

You cannot change the Block Blob without re-uploading it. However, there are situations, when you need update the file on a regular basis. Append Blobs were created just for that purpose - they are structured in such a way, so the user can upload parts of the files from the end.

Page Blobs
Designed for storing disks
Page Blobs are the basis for Microsoft Azure virtual machines environment. They were specifically designed to meet the restrictions for disks - each Page Blob should be multiple to 512 bytes. The architecture of Page Blobs allows writing data to each part of the blob.

The purpose of that is simple - when VM or your on-prem machines is operating with the local storage (HDD or SSD with your disk partitions inside) - it operates various parts of the device - without a linear structure. Thus, there was a need in a blob, that could be changed in each part.

The general application for Page Blobs is simple - you can store the images for your disks there. As soon as you need to run the disk on a VM - you can easily set it up, taking the image from the Page Blob.

In fact, if you are running any sort of disk on a VM in Microsoft Azure - it uses Page Blobs.

Blobs Access Tiers

However, that is not the end with the blobs. They also have the so-called access tiers. You may have heard about hot, warm and cold storage types.

Hot files are the ones, you store in the cloud to access a lot. Expensive to store, but cheap to access.

Warm files are the ones, you store in the cloud, to access not that frequently. Less expensive to store files then in hot, more expensive to access

Cold files are the ones, you store in the cloud to access once in months or years. Dirt cheap to store files, the most expensive type to access files

Microsoft has all three access tiers for the Blob Storage - Hot Tier, Cool Tier and Archive, (the last one in preview/beta as of September 2017).

Mind, that you cannot change access tier for Page Blobs. Access tier is applicable only for Append Blobs and Block Blobs. The limitation is connected with the purpose and architecture of these storage types. You can change access tiers for files, but not disks.

Table Storage
Cheaper, more scalable storage for your structured data and big data analysis
Table storage can store, you guessed it, tables. Microsoft Azure Table Storage was designed to store structured noSQL data. The storage is hugely scalable and, at the same time, cheap to keep data in. However, it becomes more expensive when you access files frequently.

That storage is quite handy if you find Microsoft Azure SQL too expensive and can go without SQL structure and architecture.

Queue Storage
When your services need to communicate with each other
Queue Storage is a type of storage designed to connect components of your application. It allows you to build flexible applications with decoupled and independent components that rely on asynchronous message queuing. Suppose you have an on-premises software interacting with a server somewhere in the cloud. Sometimes the server is down, meaning that you can no longer send messages to it. If you try, that would normally result in an error. Here are some other issues concerning an asynchronous communication that you have to deal with:

The necessity to have both the receiver and the sender available simultaneously. Needless to say, if one of them goes down, the communication terminates.

Mandatory implementation of try/retry logic to provide for a possible outage.

Lack of proper scalability.

However, all of that can be avoided simply by employing a mediator that will collect the messages while one of the communication partners is down. With Azure Queues, you have a third player that connects the two components and acts as both a buffer and a mediator. So for example, if the consumer partner is down, the producer can still insert messages in the queue while it's waiting for the other component to come back online.

Azure Queue storage is essentially a service for storing large numbers of messages that can be accessed from anywhere in the world via authenticated HTTP or HTTPS requests. A single queue sizes up to 64 kb.

Azure supports two types of queue mechanisms:

Storage queues. Being part of the Azure storage infrastructure, they feature a simple REST-based GET/PUT/PEEK interface with reliable and persistent messaging within and between services.

Service Bus queues are part of a broader Azure messaging infrastructure that supports queueing as well as more advanced integration patterns.

Azure Queue storage is unquestionably a service for advanced users that require certain know-how. We, therefore, suggest you familiarize yourself with Microsoft's documentation to get a clearer picture of how it functions in real life.

Disk Storage

Microsoft Azure Disk Storage works on the basis of Page Blobs. It is a service that allows you to create disks for your virtual machines. The disk, created in Disk Storage, can be accessed from only one virtual machine. In other words - it is your local drive.

Yes, it's that simple.

Here you can have two options for speed of your disks:

for standard disks (HDDs). HDDs are cheap but slow.

or premium (SSDs). SSDs are fast but expensive.

And two options for the disk management:

Unmanaged disk - you should manage the disk storage and corresponding account yourself

Managed disk - Azure does everything for you. You need to select only the size of the disk and the desired type - standard or premium

File Storage

Microsoft Azure File storage is the second storage type that was designed to support the needs of Azure VM environment. That storage is, in essence, a network share. You can store files there that can be accessed from different Virtual Machines. It is similar to Amazon EFS and is its direct competitor.

Again, quite simple.

Redundancy

Okay, now you are done with choosing the type of storage for your needs. However, in the IT world safety of your data is amongst the most essential and basic things. When you store data in Microsoft Azure, regardless of the type of storage, it is stored somewhere inside the datacenters of Microsoft. However, what if one day you wake up and read the news about the devastating accident that has completely destroyed the data center in question? Kind of a nightmare really.

To prevent that from happening, Microsoft has four options for data replication amongst their data-centers.
Disk Storage redundancy will be described separately, as it cannot be simply added to the following structure
Locally-Redundant Storage
3 copies of each file in one building but 3 different places
That is the most basic and the cheapest way to replicate your data. When you choose Locally-Redundant Storage (LRS), you can be sure that in one data-center of your choice there will be 3 copies of each file you store on different nodes (basically, on different hard drives).

LRS is available for all 5 types of Microsoft Azure Storage.

Geo-Redundant Storage
3 copies in one building, 3 copies in the other
However, if a meteorite strikes the datacenter, it won't matter at how many different nodes your data is, it will be still lost!

Microsoft, however, has thought it through and created a GRS - Geo-Redundancy Storage. You will have 6 copies of your data in 2 different regions, hundreds of miles away one from another.
It is LRS multiplied by 2, basically.
Read-Access Geo-Redundant Storage

Read-access geo-redundant storage gives you read-only access to your data in the secondary location, in addition to the replication across two regions provided by GRS. The secondary endpoint is similar to the primary endpoint but adds a suffix to the account name. That is to say, myaccount.blob.core.windows.ne t turns into

myaccount-secondary.blob.core.windows.net. Although, you need to note that Since asynchronous replication involves a delay, in the event of a regional disaster it is possible that changes that have not yet been replicated to the secondary region will be lost if the data cannot be recovered from the primary region.

Zone Redundant Storage

Zone-redundant storage (ZRS) replicates your data asynchronously across data centers within one or two regions in addition to storing three replicas similar to LRS. Data stored in ZRS is durable even if the primary data center is unavailable. ZRS is only available for block blobs and cannot be converted to LRS or GRS (or vice versa).

Disk Storage Redundancy

Disk storage serves as a storage for Azure VMs and hence requires replication to ensure data integrity. The first thing you need to do is to enable Azure VM replication in the Azure portal.

The next step is to configure continuous replication for your VMs. That way data writes on the VM disks are continuously transferred to the cache storage account in the target location. Site Recovery processes the data and sends it to the target storage account. After the data is processed, recovery points are generated in the target storage account every few minutes. If your main setup fails somehow, new virtual machines will be initiated in the target region and the cache storage account will ensure that your data is intact.

Microsoft Azure Storage Accounts

Now that you are aware of storage types, access tiers and redundancy, it will be quite easy to understand how it works inside your Microsoft Azure account. Within Microsoft Azure, you can choose two Storage Account types. They are General-Purpose Account and Blob Storage account. You may think, that Blob Storage account works only blobs and General-Purpose works with the rest.
And you would be completely wrong.
General-Purpose Storage Account

General-Purpose Account is designed to operate with all types of Microsoft Azure Storage, except Disk Storage. To create disks inside your Azure Storage, you should first create the Microsoft Azure Virtual Machine.

Blob Storage Account

This might be confusing at the beginning, but bear with us. Blob Storage accounts are designed to work with Block Blobs and Append Blobs. Page Blobs, however, can only be created when you are using a General-Purpose account.

Why?

Because, one of the distinctive features of Block and Append Blobs are their ability to be Hot, Cool or Archive as they are files. Page Blobs are designed to be disks. They were designed not to store files, but to enhance the functionality of VMs inside Azure, thus they need to be frequently accessed. That makes access tiering in case of Page Blobs useless.

Change Access Tier Inside Container

You can now change the access tier for your blob right from the container. You may ask - and how is that different from the previous model?

A container is a basic structural element for your storage account. You first create a storage account and then create a container, where will your files get. Previously, the only possibility to choose access tier inside Microsoft Azure was to select the needed tier inside Blob Storage account at the stage of creation of the account.

But now you can change access tier after you created an account. And more importantly, this feature works for both General Purpose Accounts and Blob Accounts. Now, if you think that you do not need files to be accessed frequently, you can simply go to the container, select a file and change its access tier.

That feature is in preview mode and works currently (as of September 2017) only in LRS for Append and Block Blobs

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Microsoft Azure Storage Types Explained - NET-TRICKS

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Microsoft Azure Cloud offers several types of scalable, high-availability storage: for tables, queues, files, blobs and Azure virtual machine disks. But what does it all really mean? Even for an IT-specialist, it is not that easy to determine the best solution for the corporate requirements and environment.

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Azure storage replication - useful link 

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Azure storage replication - useful link 

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The data in your Microsoft Azure storage account is always replicated to ensure durability and high availability. Azure Storage replication copies your data so that it is protected from planned and unplanned events ranging from transient hardware failures, network or power outages, massive natural disasters, and so on. You can choose to replicate your data within the same data center, across zonal data centers within the same region, and even across regions.

Replication ensures that your storage account meets the Service-Level Agreement (SLA) for Storage even in the face of failures. See the SLA for information about Azure Storage guarantees for durability and availability.

Choosing a replication option

When you create a storage account, you can select one of the following replication options:

The following table provides a quick overview of the scope of durability and availability that each replication strategy will provide you for a given type of event (or event of similar impact).

Designed to provide _ durability of objects over a given year

at least 99.999999999% (11 9's)

at least 99.9999999999% (12 9's)

at least 99.99999999999999% (16 9's)

at least 99.99999999999999% (16 9's)

See Azure Storage Pricing for pricing information on the different redundancy options.

Changing replication strategy

We allow you to change your storage account's replication strategy by using the Azure portal, Azure Powershell, Azure CLI, or one of the many Azure client libraries. Changing the replication type of your storage account does not result in down time.

Note

Currently, you cannot use the Portal or API to convert your account to ZRS. If you want to convert your account's replication to ZRS, see Zone-redundant storage (ZRS) for details.

Are there any costs to changing my account's replication strategy?

It depends on your conversion path. Ordering from cheapest to the most expensive redundancy offering we have LRS, ZRS, GRS, and RA-GRS. For example, going from LRS to anything will incur additional charges because you are going to a more sophisticated redundancy level. Going to GRS or RA-GRS will incur an egress bandwidth charge because your data (in your primary region) is being replicated to your remote secondary region. This is a one-time charge at initial setup. After the data is copied, there are no further conversion charges. You will only be charged for replicating any new or updates to existing data. For details on bandwidth charges, see Azure Storage Pricing page.

If you change from GRS to LRS, there is no additional cost, but your replicated data is deleted from the secondary location.

See also

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The data in your Microsoft Azure storage account is always replicated to ensure durability and high availability. Azure Storage replication copies your data so that it is protected from planned and unplanned events ranging from transient hardware failures, network or power outages, massive natural disasters, and so on.

# data[].attributes.headline
Azure storage types explained - Useful Link

# data[].attributes.subject
Azure storage types explained - Useful Link

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Microsoft Azure Cloud offers several types of scalable, high-availability storage: for tables, queues, files, blobs and Azure virtual machine disks. But what does it all really mean?

Even for an IT-specialist, it is not that easy to determine the best solution for the corporate requirements and environment. In this article, we will provide a definition for each of the Microsoft Azure storage types and give examples.

Microsoft Azure Storage

All storage providers from the "big 3" (Amazon, Google and Microsoft) develop their own structure and naming for the storage and Microsoft is no exception. To start working with Microsoft Azure Storage, you need to:

Define the need in the storage

Get an account in Azure

Choose your storage account type

Choose your storage type, depending on the storage account type

Choose your redundancy level, depending on the storage type

In Microsoft Azure, there are two types of storage accounts, five types of storage, four levels of redundancy, and three tiers for storing your files.

In this article, we will overview each storage type, that exists on the Microsoft Azure platform and discuss possible options for usage for the given storage type. Our main goal for the article is to create clear view for the over-complicated at first sight, Microsoft Azure Storage.

Storage Types

The basis of Microsoft Azure Storage is, of course, the storage type you need to choose. The type is defining how you store what and which options and features you can use. There are five storage types in Microsoft Azure and they can be divided into two groups by their design. One group is designed with file storage, scalability and communication in mind and is accessible via REST API. The other - to enhance the features of Microsoft Azure Virtual Machine environment and to be accessed from VMs exclusively.
However, things are not so simple.
Blob Storage
Blob is a file
It all has begun with Blob Storage in Microsoft Azure. BLOB is an acronym and means Binary Large OBject. Blob. To put it in plain English, blob is a file. Thus, Microsoft Azure Blob Storage is a storage for your files.

Blobs can be stored in Azure in three different ways:

Block Blob

Good for file storage, are capable of 4.77 TB per file

When you store a file in block blob - that means that it arrives on the storage in small parts and only after you complete the upload - the file/blob puts itself together in one peace. With that architecture, file cannot be modified without a complete re-upload. This is the most basic and the cheapest way to store your files in Azure.

You may wonder - why is it called block blob storage? Such name was given due to the specific architecture of the allocation of the files inside Microsoft's datacenters. When you upload your file to the storage - it is shown to you as a whole, but in fact, each file is divided into separate parts, called blocks. That architecture was proposed a long time ago and it ensures the fast and lossless file upload.

You can have access to the files, but cannot change them inside the storage. Thus Block Blobs are ideal for backups and storing user files. Previously, the size of one blob (one file) could not be bigger than 200GB. If 200GB per file were okay in the year of 2007, it's considered too small in 2017. So Azure has updated the limit to be equal to 4.77 TB per blob.

Append Blobs

Good for storing logs or meta-data, you need to update constantly

You cannot change the Block Blob without re-uploading it. However, there are situations, when you need update the file on a regular basis. Append Blobs were created just for that purpose - they are structured in such a way, so the user can upload parts of the files from the end.

Page Blobs
Designed for storing disks
Page Blobs are the basis for Microsoft Azure virtual machines environment. They were specifically designed to meet the restrictions for disks - each Page Blob should be multiple to 512 bytes. The architecture of Page Blobs allows writing data to each part of the blob.

The purpose of that is simple - when VM or your on-prem machines is operating with the local storage (HDD or SSD with your disk partitions inside) - it operates various parts of the device - without a linear structure. Thus, there was a need in a blob, that could be changed in each part.

The general application for Page Blobs is simple - you can store the images for your disks there. As soon as you need to run the disk on a VM - you can easily set it up, taking the image from the Page Blob.

In fact, if you are running any sort of disk on a VM in Microsoft Azure - it uses Page Blobs.

Blobs Access Tiers

However, that is not the end with the blobs. They also have the so-called access tiers. You may have heard about hot, warm and cold storage types.

Hot files are the ones, you store in the cloud to access a lot. Expensive to store, but cheap to access.

Warm files are the ones, you store in the cloud, to access not that frequently. Less expensive to store files then in hot, more expensive to access

Cold files are the ones, you store in the cloud to access once in months or years. Dirt cheap to store files, the most expensive type to access files

Microsoft has all three access tiers for the Blob Storage - Hot Tier, Cool Tier and Archive, (the last one in preview/beta as of September 2017).

Mind, that you cannot change access tier for Page Blobs. Access tier is applicable only for Append Blobs and Block Blobs. The limitation is connected with the purpose and architecture of these storage types. You can change access tiers for files, but not disks.

Table Storage
Cheaper, more scalable storage for your structured data and big data analysis
Table storage can store, you guessed it, tables. Microsoft Azure Table Storage was designed to store structured noSQL data. The storage is hugely scalable and, at the same time, cheap to keep data in. However, it becomes more expensive when you access files frequently.

That storage is quite handy if you find Microsoft Azure SQL too expensive and can go without SQL structure and architecture.

Queue Storage
When your services need to communicate with each other
Queue Storage is a type of storage designed to connect components of your application. It allows you to build flexible applications with decoupled and independent components that rely on asynchronous message queuing. Suppose you have an on-premises software interacting with a server somewhere in the cloud. Sometimes the server is down, meaning that you can no longer send messages to it. If you try, that would normally result in an error. Here are some other issues concerning an asynchronous communication that you have to deal with:

The necessity to have both the receiver and the sender available simultaneously. Needless to say, if one of them goes down, the communication terminates.

Mandatory implementation of try/retry logic to provide for a possible outage.

Lack of proper scalability.

However, all of that can be avoided simply by employing a mediator that will collect the messages while one of the communication partners is down. With Azure Queues, you have a third player that connects the two components and acts as both a buffer and a mediator. So for example, if the consumer partner is down, the producer can still insert messages in the queue while it's waiting for the other component to come back online.

Azure Queue storage is essentially a service for storing large numbers of messages that can be accessed from anywhere in the world via authenticated HTTP or HTTPS requests. A single queue sizes up to 64 kb.

Azure supports two types of queue mechanisms:

Storage queues. Being part of the Azure storage infrastructure, they feature a simple REST-based GET/PUT/PEEK interface with reliable and persistent messaging within and between services.

Service Bus queues are part of a broader Azure messaging infrastructure that supports queueing as well as more advanced integration patterns.

Azure Queue storage is unquestionably a service for advanced users that require certain know-how. We, therefore, suggest you familiarize yourself with Microsoft's documentation to get a clearer picture of how it functions in real life.

Disk Storage

Microsoft Azure Disk Storage works on the basis of Page Blobs. It is a service that allows you to create disks for your virtual machines. The disk, created in Disk Storage, can be accessed from only one virtual machine. In other words - it is your local drive.

Yes, it's that simple.

Here you can have two options for speed of your disks:

for standard disks (HDDs). HDDs are cheap but slow.

or premium (SSDs). SSDs are fast but expensive.

And two options for the disk management:

Unmanaged disk - you should manage the disk storage and corresponding account yourself

Managed disk - Azure does everything for you. You need to select only the size of the disk and the desired type - standard or premium

File Storage

Microsoft Azure File storage is the second storage type that was designed to support the needs of Azure VM environment. That storage is, in essence, a network share. You can store files there that can be accessed from different Virtual Machines. It is similar to Amazon EFS and is its direct competitor.

Again, quite simple.

Redundancy

Okay, now you are done with choosing the type of storage for your needs. However, in the IT world safety of your data is amongst the most essential and basic things. When you store data in Microsoft Azure, regardless of the type of storage, it is stored somewhere inside the datacenters of Microsoft. However, what if one day you wake up and read the news about the devastating accident that has completely destroyed the data center in question? Kind of a nightmare really.

To prevent that from happening, Microsoft has four options for data replication amongst their data-centers.
Disk Storage redundancy will be described separately, as it cannot be simply added to the following structure
Locally-Redundant Storage
3 copies of each file in one building but 3 different places
That is the most basic and the cheapest way to replicate your data. When you choose Locally-Redundant Storage (LRS), you can be sure that in one data-center of your choice there will be 3 copies of each file you store on different nodes (basically, on different hard drives).

LRS is available for all 5 types of Microsoft Azure Storage.

Geo-Redundant Storage
3 copies in one building, 3 copies in the other
However, if a meteorite strikes the datacenter, it won't matter at how many different nodes your data is, it will be still lost!

Microsoft, however, has thought it through and created a GRS - Geo-Redundancy Storage. You will have 6 copies of your data in 2 different regions, hundreds of miles away one from another.
It is LRS multiplied by 2, basically.
Read-Access Geo-Redundant Storage

Read-access geo-redundant storage gives you read-only access to your data in the secondary location, in addition to the replication across two regions provided by GRS. The secondary endpoint is similar to the primary endpoint but adds a suffix to the account name. That is to say, myaccount.blob.core.windows.ne t turns into

myaccount-secondary.blob.core.windows.net. Although, you need to note that Since asynchronous replication involves a delay, in the event of a regional disaster it is possible that changes that have not yet been replicated to the secondary region will be lost if the data cannot be recovered from the primary region.

Zone Redundant Storage

Zone-redundant storage (ZRS) replicates your data asynchronously across data centers within one or two regions in addition to storing three replicas similar to LRS. Data stored in ZRS is durable even if the primary data center is unavailable. ZRS is only available for block blobs and cannot be converted to LRS or GRS (or vice versa).

Disk Storage Redundancy

Disk storage serves as a storage for Azure VMs and hence requires replication to ensure data integrity. The first thing you need to do is to enable Azure VM replication in the Azure portal.

The next step is to configure continuous replication for your VMs. That way data writes on the VM disks are continuously transferred to the cache storage account in the target location. Site Recovery processes the data and sends it to the target storage account. After the data is processed, recovery points are generated in the target storage account every few minutes. If your main setup fails somehow, new virtual machines will be initiated in the target region and the cache storage account will ensure that your data is intact.

Microsoft Azure Storage Accounts

Now that you are aware of storage types, access tiers and redundancy, it will be quite easy to understand how it works inside your Microsoft Azure account. Within Microsoft Azure, you can choose two Storage Account types. They are General-Purpose Account and Blob Storage account. You may think, that Blob Storage account works only blobs and General-Purpose works with the rest.
And you would be completely wrong.
General-Purpose Storage Account

General-Purpose Account is designed to operate with all types of Microsoft Azure Storage, except Disk Storage. To create disks inside your Azure Storage, you should first create the Microsoft Azure Virtual Machine.

Blob Storage Account

This might be confusing at the beginning, but bear with us. Blob Storage accounts are designed to work with Block Blobs and Append Blobs. Page Blobs, however, can only be created when you are using a General-Purpose account.

Why?

Because, one of the distinctive features of Block and Append Blobs are their ability to be Hot, Cool or Archive as they are files. Page Blobs are designed to be disks. They were designed not to store files, but to enhance the functionality of VMs inside Azure, thus they need to be frequently accessed. That makes access tiering in case of Page Blobs useless.

Change Access Tier Inside Container

You can now change the access tier for your blob right from the container. You may ask - and how is that different from the previous model?

A container is a basic structural element for your storage account. You first create a storage account and then create a container, where will your files get. Previously, the only possibility to choose access tier inside Microsoft Azure was to select the needed tier inside Blob Storage account at the stage of creation of the account.

But now you can change access tier after you created an account. And more importantly, this feature works for both General Purpose Accounts and Blob Accounts. Now, if you think that you do not need files to be accessed frequently, you can simply go to the container, select a file and change its access tier.

That feature is in preview mode and works currently (as of September 2017) only in LRS for Append and Block Blobs

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Microsoft Azure Storage Types Explained - NET-TRICKS

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Microsoft Azure Cloud offers several types of scalable, high-availability storage: for tables, queues, files, blobs and Azure virtual machine disks. But what does it all really mean? Even for an IT-specialist, it is not that easy to determine the best solution for the corporate requirements and environment.

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What is Azure—Microsoft Cloud Services | Microsoft Azure

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Bring new solutions to life with Microsoft Azure, cloud services for building, deploying, and managing intelligent applications through a global network of datacenters.

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Microsoft Azure Cloud Computing Platform & Services

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Microsoft Azure is an open, flexible, enterprise-grade cloud computing platform. Move faster, do more, and save money with IaaS + PaaS. Try for FREE.

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Learn about the different Remote Desktop clients available for all your devices

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With Work Folders users can store and access work files on personal computers and devices, often referred to as bring-your-own device (BYOD), in addition to corporate PCs. Users gain a convenient location to store work files, and they can access them from anywhere.

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Get started quickly with Microsoft Intune. Use the cloud-based enterprise mobility management (EMM) service to enable your workforce to be productive while keeping your corporate data protected.

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What is Azure Active Directory (Azure AD)?

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Use Azure Active Directory to extend your existing on-premises identities into the cloud or develop Azure AD integrated applications.

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Active Directory - Access & identity - IDaaS | Microsoft Azure

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Learn about Azure Active Directory, a powerful identity and access management service (IDaaS) for on-premises and cloud-based apps.

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Active Directory Federation Services - Useful link

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Active Directory Federation Services - Useful link

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https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows-server/identity/active-directory-federation-services

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This article begins with a brief overview of Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS), a list of the benefits to using AD FS, and a list of what's new in AD FS for Windows Server 2008.

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A comprehensive Windows 10 resource for IT professionals. Find downloads, tools, technical documentation, best practices, and other learning resources to help upgrade, manage, and keep your business secure with Windows 10.

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Cloud Services & Enterprise Mobility - What is covered: 

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Cloud Services & Enterprise Mobility - What is covered: 

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•4.1 – Describe productivity services, storage services, communications services, and search services.

•4.2 – Describe Microsoft Intune capabilities.

•4.3 – Describe virtual machines; describe Azure services.
•5.1 – Describe Windows Server Active Directory and Azure Active Directory

•5.2 – Describe Company Portal.

•5.3 – Describe device-centric to people-centric IT, describe desktop virtualization, describe Dynamic Access Control policies, describe Windows Rights Management.

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API is the acronym for Application Programming Interface, which is a software intermediary that allows two applications to talk to each other. Each time you use an app like Facebook, send an instant message, or check the weather on your phone, you're using an API.
What exactly is an API? Finally learn for yourself in this helpful video from MuleSoft, the API experts.
What Is an Example of an API?

When you use an application on your mobile phone, the application connects to the Internet and sends data to a server. The server then retrieves that data, interprets it, performs the necessary actions and sends it back to your phone. The application then interprets that data and presents you with the information you wanted in a readable way. This is what an API is - all of this happens via API.

To explain this better, let us take a familiar example.

Imagine you're sitting at a table in a restaurant with a menu of choices to order from. The kitchen is the part of the "system" that will prepare your order. What is missing is the critical link to communicate your order to the kitchen and deliver your food back to your table. That's where the waiter or API comes in. The waiter is the messenger - or API - that takes your request or order and tells the kitchen - the system - what to do. Then the waiter delivers the response back to you; in this case, it is the food.

Here is a real-life API example. You may be familiar with the process of searching flights online. Just like the restaurant, you have a variety of options to choose from, including different cities, departure and return dates, and more. Let us imagine that you're booking you are flight on an airline website. You choose a departure city and date, a return city and date, cabin class, as well as other variables. In order to book your flight, you interact with the airline's website to access their database and see if any seats are available on those dates and what the costs might be.

However, what if you are not using the airline's website--a channel that has direct access to the information? What if you are using an online travel service, such as Kayak or Expedia, which aggregates information from a number of airline databases?

The travel service, in this case, interacts with the airline's API. The API is the interface that, like your helpful waiter, can be asked by that online travel service to get information from the airline's database to book seats, baggage options, etc. The API then takes the airline's response to your request and delivers it right back to the online travel service, which then shows you the most updated, relevant information.

What an API Also Provides Is a Layer of Security

Your phone's data is never fully exposed to the server, and likewise the server is never fully exposed to your phone. Instead, each communicates with small packets of data, sharing only that which is necessary-like ordering takeout. You tell the restaurant what you would like to eat, they tell you what they need in return and then, in the end, you get your meal.

APIs have become so valuable that they comprise a large part of many business' revenue. Major companies like Google, eBay, Salesforce.com, Amazon, and Expedia are just a few of the companies that make money from their APIs. What the " API economy " refers to is this marketplace of APIs.

The Modern API

Over the years, what an "API" is has often described any sort of generic connectivity interface to an application. More recently, however, the modern API has taken on some characteristics that make them extraordinarily valuable and useful:

Modern APIs adhere to standards (typically HTTP and REST), that are developer-friendly, easily accessible and understood broadly

They are treated more like products than code. They are designed for consumption for specific audiences (e.g., mobile developers), they are documented, and they are versioned in a way that users can have certain expectations of its maintenance and lifecycle.

Because they are much more standardized, they have a much stronger discipline for security and governance, as well as monitored and managed for performance and scale

As any other piece of productized software, the modern API has its own software development lifecycle (SDLC) of designing, testing, building, managing, and versioning. Also, modern APIs are well documented for consumption and versioning.

To learn more about APIs and how to design a great API, download the eBook Undisturbed REST: A Guide to Designing the Perfect API.

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What is an API? (Application Programming Interface) | MuleSoft

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What is an API? (Application Programming Interface) API is the acronym for Application Programming Interface, which is a software intermediary that allows two applications to talk to each other. Each time you use an app like Facebook, send an instant message, or check the weather on your phone, you're using an API.

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A definition of extranet with several examples.

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3.1 -  Describe the differences between the internet, an intranet and extranet.
3.2 – Describe multi-factor authentication.
3.3 – Configure file and share permissions.Describe basic and advanced permissions.

3.4 – Describe computer viruses.

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Previous Windows Versions - Useful Link 

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Previous Windows Versions - Useful Link 

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Need content for older products or services, such as release notes, deployment guides, or how-to articles? See the links below.

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The Encrypting File System rekeying wizard allows the user to choose a certificate for EFS and to select and migrate existing files that will use the newly chosen certificate. It can also be used to migrate users in existing installations from software certificates to smartcards.

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How to share a printer via Network - Useful Link

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How to share a printer via Network - Useful Link

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How to share a printer via USB - Useful Link 

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How to share a printer via USB - Useful Link 

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Windows 10 has made both big and small changes to how things are done in the OS. Many features continue to work much the same way they did in older versions of Windows but almost as many things have changed. If you previously used a USB printer, sharing it with everyone over your network was pretty easy. All you had to do was go to the Share tab in the printer's properties and share it with everyone. The share tab is gone in Windows 10 and how you share a USB printer in Windows 10 has changed. Here's how to find the share option for sharing a USB printer over your network in Windows 10.

Open the Control Panel app and go to Devices & Printers. Right-click the printer you want to share and select 'See what's printing' from the context menu.

This opens the printer's jobs' window where you can see all active and queued print jobs. Open the Printer menu and select Sharing. This opens the properties window for the printer and here you have a Share tab. Go to the Share tab and enable the 'Share this printer' option. You can enter a different name for the printer if you like. Click Apply and everyone on your network should now be able to send print jobs to the printer you just shared.

This works for when you have multiple systems connected to the same WiFi network but are not necessarily part of the same home or work group. Why Microsoft chose to hide this little option like that is a mystery but rest assured if you don't find an old setting, feature, or option in Windows 10, it's not necessarily gone. It's just moved.

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How To Share A USB Printer Over Your Network In Windows 10

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Windows 10 has made both big and small changes to how things are done in the OS. Many features continue to work much the same way they did in older versions of Windows but almost as many things have changed. If you previously used a USB printer, sharing it with everyone over your network was pretty easy.

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Windows XP Professional supports the FAT16, FAT32, and NTFS file systems. Because NTFS has all the basic capabilities of FAT16 and FAT32, with the added advantage of advanced storage features such as compression, improved security, and larger partitions and file sizes, it is the recommended file system for Windows Vista.

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An overview on Storage Spaces - Useful Link 

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An overview on Storage Spaces - Useful Link 

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Storage Spaces Overview - TechNet Articles - United States (English) - TechNet Wiki

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Technical articles, content and resources for IT Professionals working in Microsoft technologies

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RL Squad PP

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Data Access and Management - What is covered: 

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Data Access and Management - What is covered: 

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2.1 – Describe OneDrive, Microsoft Azure storage, OneNote, Outlook, and Office 365.
2.2 – Describe storage spaces and storage pools.
2.3 – Describe Dirve/File Formats
2.4 – Describe Groups and file/folder sharing
2.5 – Describe encrypting file system (EFS).

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The Group Policy Management Console allows you to configure preferences when you edit any domain-based Group Policy object. The preferences node appears under Computer Configuration and User Configuration . The editor displays preference extensions under two categories: Windows Settings and Control Panel Settings .

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Understanding Device Configurations - What is covered:

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Understanding Device Configurations - What is covered:

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1. Configure Device options
2. Configure Desktop Setting
3. Configure Drive Encryption
4. Configure updates

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MTA Mobility & Device Fundamentals Syllabus