A general-purpose storage account provides entrance to Azure Storage services such as tables, queues, files, blobs, and Azure virtual machine disks, combined under a single account. The two performance tiers are as follows:

• Standard storage performance tier: The standard storage performance tier permits the customer to file tables, queues, files, blobs, and Azure virtual machine disks
• Premium storage performance tier: This currently exclusively supports Azure virtual machine disks

To store unstructured data as Blobs (objects), a Blob storage account is available in Azure Storage. Blob storage shares characteristics with existing general-purpose storage accounts. Similar to this are the durability, availability, scalability, and performance features. Microsoft recommends using Blob storage accounts for applications requiring entirely block or append Blob storage.

Blob storage accounts expose the Access Tier attribute, which can be specified in the process of account creation. It is possible to modify this later if needed. Two types of Access Tiers can be defined based on the data access pattern:

• Hot access tier: This tier designates that the objects in the storage account will be obtained on a frequent basis. This allows data storage at a lower access cost.
• Cool access tier: This tier indicates that the objects in the storage account will be less regularly accessed. This too allows data storage at a lower cost.
• Archiving tier: The archive tier is made for data that can work with several hours of retrieval latency and will remain in the archive for a minimum of 180 days. The archive tier is the most cost-effective opportunity for storage data, but access to that data is more expensive than in the hot or cool tiers.

It is permitted to switch between these tiers if there is a change in the usage pattern of data. It must be noted that changing the Access Tier can result in additional costs.

The requirement to create a storage account is that you have an Azure subscription. The subscription gives the customer access to numerous Azure services. It is possible to create a free Azure account to get started. Once the consumer decides to acquire a subscription plan, it is possible to choose from a variation of purchase alternatives. A single customer can create up to 100 storage accounts with an individual subscription.

In the example, we will choose a general-purpose storage account. The next configurable field, besides standard and premium storage, is the replication setting. To be able to know which one we need, it's important to first understand the different replication redundancy settings. You will find more detailed information about the available redundancy options later in the chapter.