Data storage on Windows Azure and SQL Azure

Windows Azure, SQL Azure, Blob storage, Local storage, Table storage, Queue storage, web role, worker role, Content Delivery Network, Dev Sync etc.. are some of the buzz words which indicates that there are Azure bees around you. If you are not keeping the pace with the advancements that are constantly being made available on this platform, it might feel like a very tough time when you are faced with a situation when you need to develop a POC or an architecture design that works on Azure platform. Fortunately there are a lot of whitepapers and MSDN library that can help you to get started.

But the first thing that clicks my mind when I start the architecture / solution design, is with some basic questions like, how will I capture data and where will I store data. Maintaining session state, implementing security, auditing, logging, error control and reporting, need for a collaboration platform, scalability and performance considerations, migration considerations etc.. are all vertical placeholders in a architecture design than runs across the solution. But when I need to figure out my horizontal figures, my source and destination are the basic blocks. If you have figured out the data storage as Windows Azure either as a destination / staging location / hosting platform, the answer for data storage is not as simple as "enterprise edition of 64-bit SQL Server", whether it's a BI solution where you might use Azure as a temporary / permanent staging location or an Application solution where you might use Azure in place of on-premise SQL Server. With cloud this gets quite more complex, and factors like pricing and storage capacity comes into consideration.

Recently there's a very nice article published on technet, that is worth keeping in your arsenal as a part of intelligence building exercise on Windows Azure platform, to tackle your first encounter with Windows Azure environment. This article provides nice overview on data storage offerings on Windows Azure platform, and the same can be read from here.