1. Pre-requisite Knowledge –

Before we start with the understanding of Blob Storage, we should know –

• Basic knowledge of cloud computing
• Basic knowledge of Microsoft Azure

2. Background –

I would like to explain Azure Blob storage before we list down where it be used.

Azure Blob storage is one of type of service comes under Azure storage. Data stored in the Blob storage can be accessed via its URL over HTTP or HTTPS. We can fetch the objects from Blob storage using Azure storage REST API, Azure CLI, Azure PowerShell and by using Azure storage client library which is available in different languages like .NET, Java, Node.JS, Python, PHP, and Ruby.

Types of Azure Blob storage:

• Block blobs – It stores the data objects like text and binary up to 4.7 TB. The objects are stored in blocks. We can manage individual blocks.
• Append blobs – This type of storage is like block blobs but optimized for append activities. This is ideal to use when we need to append the information/data to the existing data like logging.
• Page blobs – It is like virtual hard drive files. It will serve as disks in virtual machines. It stored the random-access files up to 8 TB.

3. Recommendation - when to use Azure Blob?
   • It is used to store unstructured data like text or binary information.
   • By using BLOB storage, we can store the text and binary data.
   • In IoT, media and other videos/audio applications like streaming video and audio information.
   • It is very common to have backups of our data in case of disasters recovery - To store the data of backups, disaster recovery.
   • Archived content - To store the data of archiving.
   • Log files – We can store the log files in BLOB and can be shared and accessible quickly.
   • Since it has great flexibility to access via URL (Http, Https) we can image, etc. over the browser easily.
   • Storing data for analysis by an on-premises or Azure-hosted service.

Conclusion - In this article, we have learned general scenarios where BLOB storage can be useful.