Introduction
As company website grows globally, the demand for fast, reliable access to product images, videos, marketing materials, and customer success stories continues to rise. To meet this challenge, I completed a lab in the Azure portal to configure a highly available blob storage solution with public access, versioning, and recovery features.
This blog post documents the full process, from creating the storage account to testing file restoration.
What You’ll Learn
- How to create a high-availability Azure Storage Account
- How to configure anonymous public access for website content
- How to create and manage a blob container
- How to enable soft delete and restore deleted files
- How to enable blob versioning and recover previous versions
Step-by-Step Lab Instructions
1. Create a storage account to support the public website.
- In the portal, search for and select
Storage accounts.
- Select + Create.
- For resource group select new. Give your resource group a name and select OK.
- Set the Storage account name to
publicwebsite. Make sure the storage account name is unique by adding an identifier.
- Take the defaults for other settings.
- Select Review* *and then **Create.
- Wait for the storage account to deploy, and then select Go to resource.
2. This storage requires high availability if there’s a regional outage. Additionally, enable read access to the secondary region.
- In the storage account, in the Data management section, select the Redundancy blade.
- Ensure Read-access Geo-redundant storage is selected.
- Review the primary and secondary location information.
3. Information on the public website should be accessible without requiring customers to login.
- In the storage account, in the Settings section, select the Configuration blade.
- Ensure the Allow blob anonymous access setting is Enabled.
- Be sure to Save your changes.
Create a blob storage container with anonymous read access
1. The public website has various images and documents. Create a blob storage container for the content.
- In your storage account, in the Data storage section, select the Containers blade.
- Select + Container.
- Ensure the Name of the container is
public. - Select Create.
2. Customers should be able to view the images without being authenticated. Configure anonymous read access for the public container blobs.
- Select your public container.
- On the Overview blade, select Change access level.
- Ensure the Public access level is Blob (anonymous read access for blobs only).
- Select OK.
Practice uploading files and testing access.
1. For testing, upload a file to the public container. The type of file doesn’t matter. A small image or text file is a good choice.
- Ensure you are viewing your container.
- Select Upload.
- Browse to files and select a file. Browse to a file of your choice.
- Select Upload.
- Close the upload window, **Refresh **the page and ensure your file was uploaded.
2. Determine the URL for your uploaded file. Open a browser and test the URL.
Select your uploaded file.
On the Overview **tab, copy the **URL.
Paste the URL into a new browser tab.
If you have uploaded an image file it will display in the browser. Other file types should be downloaded.
Configure soft delete
1. It’s important that the website documents can be restored if they’re deleted. Configure blob soft delete for 21 days.
- Go to the Overview **blade of the **storage account.
- On the Properties page, locate the Blob service section.
- Select the Blob soft delete setting.
- Ensure the Enable soft delete for blobs is checked.
- Change the Keep deleted blobs for (in days setting) is 21.
- Notice you can also Enable soft delete for containers.
- Don’t forget to Save your changes.
2. If something gets deleted, you need to practice using soft delete to restore the files.
- Navigate to your container where you uploaded a file.
- Select the file you uploaded and then select Delete.
Select OK to confirm deleting the file.
On the container Overview page, toggle the slider Show deleted blobs. This toggle is to the right of the search box.
- Select your deleted file, and use the ellipses on the far right, to Undelete the file.
- Refresh the container and confirm the file has been restored.
Configure blob versioning
1. It’s important to keep track of the different website product document versions. Learn more about blob versioning.
- Go to the Overview blade of the storage account.
- In the Properties section, locate the Blob service section.
- Select the Versioning setting.
- Ensure the Enable versioning for blobs checkbox is checked.
- Notice your options to keep all versions or delete versions after.
- Don’t forget to Save your changes.
2. As you have time experiment with restoring previous blob versions.
Upload another version of your container file. This overwrites your existing file.
Your previous file version is listed on Show deleted blobs page.
Final Thoughts
This lab provided a hands-on way to configure Azure Blob Storage for a public-facing website with global reach. With high availability, anonymous access, versioning, and soft delete enabled, we now have a resilient and flexible solution for delivering and managing mission-critical content.
Thanks for reading, see you in the next one!
Top comments (1)
Nice!