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Deploying Blob Storage for a Public website on Azure

Table of Content


What is Blob Storage?

Blob Storage is a cloud storage solution used for storing large amount of unstructured data including text documents, emails, social media posts, multimedia (audio/video/images) Learn more.


Create a storage account with high availability.

Step 1: Create a storage account to support the public website.

  • In the portal, search for and select Storage accounts.

Storage account

  • Select + Create.

+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.

Storage container

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

Go to resource

Step 2: Enable read access to the secondary region for high availability.

  • 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.

Back up

Step 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.

Blob access


Create a blob storage container with anonymous read access

Step 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.

blob

Step 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.

Overview

  • Ensure the Public access level is Blob (anonymous read access for blobs only).
  • Select OK.

Public access


Practice uploading files and testing access.

Step 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.

Upload

Step 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.

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.

URL testing


Configure soft delete

Step 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.

soft delete

  • Ensure the Enable soft delete for blobs is checked.
  • Change the Keep deleted blobs for (in days) setting to 21.
  • Notice you can also Enable soft delete for containers.
  • Don’t forget to Save your changes.

save

Step 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.

undelete

restored


Configure blob versioning

Step 1: It’s important to keep track of the different website product document versions.

  • Go to the Overview blade of the storage account.
  • In the Properties section, locate the Blob service section.
  • Select the Versioning setting.

versioning

  • 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.

enable

Step 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.

Conclusion


Thank you for reading my blog.😊😊

If you need further assistance, feel free to reach out in the comment or hit me up on Twitter. You can also follow me on GitHub. My DM's are open and love discussions on cloud topics as always!😁

Oluwatofunmi Emmanuel Oluwaloseyi

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