Provision of private storage for internal company documents

Nowadays, organizations generate and work with large sets of data and sensitive information daily and this ranges from employee data, operational reports, project files, contracts, policies, training and financial documents amongst others.

Organizations must invest in and implement storage solutions for the various departments to secure the files and documents, maintain and also guard access to the sensitive documentations. So, the need to get a storage account with high availability can not be overempasised.
In this article, I will want to demostrate how we can provide storage accounts for various departments of a company for storage of their internal company documents.

• In the portal, search for and select Storage accounts

• Select + Create.

• Select the Resource group created in the previous lab.

• Set the Storage account name to private02. Add an identifier to the name to ensure the name is unique >> Select Review, and then Create the storage account.

• Wait for the storage account to deploy, and then select Go to resource.

This type of storage will require high availability should there be any form of regional outage. We will ensure Read access in the secondary region is not required. Configure the appropriate level of redundancy.

• In the storage account, in the Data management section, select the Redundancy blade.

• Ensure Geo-redundant storage (GRS) is selected.
• Ensure you save the changes

• Review the primary and secondary location information>> Save your changes>> Refresh page

Create a storage container, upload a file, and restrict access to the fill

• In the storage account, in the Data storage section, select the Containers blade.

• Select + Container.
• Ensure the Name of the container is private >>Ensure the Public access level is Private (no anonymous access) and review the Advanced settings while you take the defaults. Select Create.

For testing, upload a file to the private container.(The type of file doesn’t matter and a small image or text file is a good choice).Test to ensure the file isn’t publically accessible.

• Select the container.

• Select Upload >>Browse to files and select a file >>Upload the file.

• Select the uploaded file.
• On the Overview tab, copy the URL.
• Paste the URL into a new browser tab >>Verify the file doesn’t display and you receive an error.

An external partner requires read and write access to the file for at least the next 24 hours. Configure and test a shared access signature (SAS). Learn more about Shared Access Signatures.

• Select your uploaded blob file and move to the Generate SAS tab.
• In the Permissions drop-down, ensure the partner has only Read permissions >> Verify the Start and expiry date/time is for the next 24 hours >> Select Generate SAS token and URL.

• Copy the Blob SAS URL to a new browser tab.

• Verify you can access the file.(If you have uploaded an image file it will display in the browser) Other file types will be downloaded.

Configure storage access tiers and content replication

To save on costs, after 30 days, move blobs from the hot tier to the cool tier. Learn more how manage the Azure Blob storage lifecycle.

• Return to the storage account. In the Overview section, notice the Default access tier is set to Hot.
• In the Data management section, select the Lifecycle management blade.

• Select Add rule.
• Set the Rule name to movetocool >> Set the Rule scope to Apply rule to all blobs in the storage account >> Select Next.

• Ensure Last modified is selected >> Set More than (days ago) to 30 >> In the Then drop-down select Move to cool storage >>As you have time, review other lifecycle options in the drop-down.
• Add the rule.

The public website files need to be backed up to another storage account

• In your storage account, create a new container called backup. Use the default values.

• Navigate to your publicwebsite storage account. This storage account was created in the previous exercise.

• In the Data management section, select the Object replication blade.

• Select Create replication rules.
• Set the Destination storage account to the private storage account.

• Set the Source container to public and the Destination container to backup >> Create the replication rule.

Optionally, you can also upload a file to the public container.

• Return to the private storage account and refresh the backup container.

• Within a few minutes your public website file will appear in the backup folder.

Conclusively, provision of private storage for internal company documents is very necessary because of information security, data protection compliance,company policies, business continuity support, disaster recovery amongst others.