DEV Community: Gideon Iliya

data storage creation

Gideon Iliya — Sun, 03 Sep 2023 21:35:25 +0000

Azure managed disks are block-level storage volumes that are managed by Azure and used with Azure Virtual Machines. Managed disks are like a physical disk in an on-premises server but, virtualized. With managed disks, all you have to do is specify the disk size, the disk type, and provision the disk. Once you provision the disk, Azure handles the rest.

The available types of disks are ultra disks, premium solid-state drives (SSD), standard SSDs, and standard hard disk drives (HDD). For information about each individual disk type, see Select a disk type for IaaS VMs.
Let us illustrate by listing the steps required to create a Data Disk for a Virtual Machine in Azure
a. create a virtual machine. See my blog here for the procedure to creating a virtual machine.

b. under the left pane, select disks.
c. Select create and attach a new disk
d. give the disk a name, select storage type and select the size
e. Click save

f. Go back to the virtual machine and click on connect so as to RDP into the virtual machine
g. Click select
h. Click 'Download RDP file'.

i. A small pop up window will show, click on connect
j. Fill in your credentials for username and password
k. Click 'Yes' on the pop up window that appears again
l. your virtual machine is running.

*Attaching the Data Disk created to the Virtual Machine *

Search for 'Disk Manager' in the search bar of the virtual machine
click on create and format Hard Disk partitions.
Click ok to initialize the disk.
Right click on the unallocated hard disk and click on 'New Simple Volume'.
Click on 'Next' on the pop up windows that are opened
on the format partition pop up window, change the volume label to the proposed name of your data disk and click next.
Click finish to set up your data disk.
The data disk is attached to the virtual machine. You can increase the size of your data disk anytime there is need, but you cannot reduce the size.

A Comprehensive guide to hosting a static website in Azure Blob storage using Visual Studio Code

Gideon Iliya — Wed, 30 Aug 2023 21:30:48 +0000

A static website (sometimes called a flat or stationary page) is a website that can be loaded and served from a pre-defined set of files, such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files and it is displayed on a web browser exactly as it is stored. It does not change, it stays the same, or "static" for every viewer of the site. Static websites do not require a web server to render content, which makes them faster and cheaper to host. You can host a static website on Azure Storage, a service that provides scalable and secure cloud storage for your data.
To host a static website in Azure Storage, you must enable your storage account's static website hosting feature and specify a default index page and an optional error page. You can use the Azure portal, Azure CLI, or Azure PowerShell to enable this feature and configure the settings.
In this post, I will be showing you how to host a static website using the Azure portal.

Let us begin!

Click here to open the static website template
Click on download to download and save the file to a location in your computer
Click here to download Visual studio code.
Choose the operating system and click on download
Install the Visual Studio Code on your computer
Create a storage account on the azure portal. For more information on how to create a storage account visit my blog here
Click on static website from the left pane. Toggle the button from 'Disable' to 'Enable' to enable the static website.
Type "index.html" on the index document name and "error.html" on the error document path fields.
Click on save
After being saved, a primary and secondary endpoints are generated. NOTE: The Primary end point is the URL of the static website which can be used to access the website on any browser.
Go back to the storage account and click on containers; a new container is created with the name '$web' to host the static website.

Open your file with Visual Studio Code

Open visual studio code and click on 'File' and select 'Open Folder'
Select the folder of the template you downloaded and click on 'index.html'. Your html code automatically reflects as shown below
You can edit the parameters like name, LinkedIn address, job description, etc to your own and save the changes you made.
Click on the Extension button
In the search bar, type Azure Account and click 'install' to install it
Click on the Azure button; under resources click sign in to Azure
Select your Azure account and log in
A browser page will be opened with a message prompting you to close the browser.
Click on Resources drop down arrow and select storage account
Right click on the account you created
Select Deploy to static website via Azure Storage
Select the folder to deploy to the Static website
Wait for the folder to be deployed to the storage container
Click on Browse to website directly or copy and paste your primary endpoint in a browser and click enter.
Your static website will be displayed in your browser. From your Azure portal, go to the container $web which you created. click on it and you will see the data for the static website you created.

Creating a Blob Storage Account in Azure

Gideon Iliya — Mon, 14 Aug 2023 21:58:19 +0000

We will be considering the steps required to create an Azure storage account. An Azure storage account contains all your different Azure storage data objects: blob, files, queues and tables. we shall be considering how to store data object using blob. Blob is used to store large amounts of unstructured data. This data is accessible anywhere in the world over HTTP or HTTPS.
The first thing to do is to log into the azure portal and create a storage account.

Steps for Creating a Storage account

Type storage account in the search bar or click on it on the dashboard.
Select your subscription and resource group or create your a new resource group
Select the parameters under Instance details and provide a storage account name. By default, performance and redundancy is selected. You can change them based on preference or need.
We will not make any changes to the parameters under the other tabs from Advanced to Tags. click on Review tab and then click on create at the bottom left-hand corner of the screen.
Click on go to resources.
Select container (No.1) under Data Storage and click on container (No.2) to create one
Give the container a name
Click the dropdown arrow under 'Public access level' and select 'Blob (anonymous read access for blobs only)' and click the create button

Uploading a file

Click on the name of the container you created to open it.

Click on the upload tab; a new window is opened.
Click on Browse for files. Select the file and click open.
Finally click the upload button and close the window. Your file is loaded into the container. Note, a URL is created for the file that was stored in the container and it can be viewed from anywhere on the globe once the URL is copied into a web browser. To view the file on the web; a. Click on the file name to open a new window b. Copy the URL of the file. c. Open your web browser and paste the URL. You should see the file you uploaded displayed on the web browser Azure Storage Access Tiers

Azure storage comes with four levels of access.
You can reduce costs by placing blob data into the most cost-efficient access tiers. Depending on the estimated frequency of usage, data can be stored in the following access tiers:
a. Hot tier - This implies that the data is accessed frequently, therefore it should be available always. When you tick the check box close to the file name, the access tier selected by default is Hot tier

b. Cool tier - The data is less frequently accessed. The data in this tier should be stored for a minimum of 30 days.

c. Cold tier - This online tier is optimized for storing data that should be stored for a minimum of 90 days.

d. Archive tier - This is an offline tier and is optimized for data that is rarely accessed and that has flexible latency requirements. Data should be stored for a minimum of 180 days.

The abc steps of creating a Virtual Machine in Azure

Gideon Iliya — Tue, 08 Aug 2023 15:28:56 +0000

What is virtual machine in simple words?
A virtual machine is a virtualized instance of a computer that can perform almost all of the same functions as a computer, including running applications and operating systems. It is a compute resource that uses software instead of a physical computer to run programs and deploy apps.
To create a virtual machine in Azure you need to have access. There are different types of access in Azure which include but not limited to the free subscription, student subscription and the pay-as-you go. To keep things simple, we will use the free subscription.
Once your registration for the free subscription is done, log into the portal (azure.portal.com). You can navigate to different resources, but for the purposes of this blog, we will be highlighting the basic steps required to create a virtual machine.

STEPS TO CREATE A VIRTUAL MACHINE

On the search bar of azure portal, type virtual and select the virtual machine option
Click on create. Several tabs will be displayed starting with Basic tab.

A. BASIC TAB

Project Details

Under project details, provide a subscription and a resource group name.

Your subscription is what gives you the right or access to make use of azure resources while your resource group is like a container or folder that houses your resources.

Instance Details

Give the virtual machine a name to make it unique.
Choose a region where your machine will be hosted in the cloud
Under Availability options, choose 'No infrastructure redundancy required
Security type: select Trusted launch virtual machine
For image, select the windows 10 pro from the drop down menu. Note that Image simply means the operating system you want the virtual machine to operate with.
VM Architecture: select x64
Size: select the default size shown

Administrator Account

For Administrative account, you must provide a username and a password. Make sure you have your username and password saved somewhere as you will need it later to access the virtual machine

Inbound Port rules

For the inbound port rules, do not change anything. leave it as default.

Licensing

Tick the check box to to confirm you have an eligible windows 10/11 license

B. DISK TAB

OS Disk

OS disk type: select standard SSD. this has a lower cost compared with the premium option.
All other options should be left as default.

For the other tabs (Networking tab to Tag tab), leave everything as default, then click on the review and create tab. The system will run a validation to make sure there are no errors.

Click on create at the bottom left corner of the screen to deploy the resource. The status of the deployment can be viewed by clicking the notification bell icon.

When deployment is completed, click on 'Go to resource' to set up the virtual Machine.

HOW TO ACCESS THE VIRTUAL MACHINE

Click on the connect icon, a window opens showing native RDP.
Click on select; another window will open.
Select ‘download RDP file’ and open it, then click connect. Another dialog box opens requesting for username and password (i.e the username and password you used to create the Administrator Account). Provide them and click ok.
Another box opens click yes. The virtual machine becomes active. You have successfully logged into your Virtual Machine and can do your work normally

NOTE: The longer your resources are in azure, the more you will be charged. Therefore, it is always advisable to delete the resource created from the resource group to avoid incurring extra charges.