#blobs storage

Get Last Sync Time for Read-Access Geo-Redundant Azure Storage

Has Something Gone Wrong?

Generally, we choose to leverage Read-Access Geo-Redundant Azure Storage Accounts (RA-GRS) because we can use it as part of our disaster recovery (DR) plan. And sometimes, we forget that our devil is in the details. Disaster recovery (DR) plans are rarely tested and can cause headaches when they are. So let’s relieve some of those headaches.

Headache…

“Geo Replication…

Copy a Blob From an Azure Datacenter to Another Using PowerShell

Copying a Blob Using Azure PowerShell

On regular occasions, I need to move blobs from one storage account to another. And there are a couple of ways that we can do this. The first is to download the blob and upload it to a new location. In most scenarios, this is not what we want. This post demonstrates how to create an Azure Storage Blob Copy job and how to monitor its progress. (more…)

Deploying a Monster Virtual Machine Using Azure Resource Manager on Microsoft #Azure

A Monster VM Azure Resource Manager Template

In April I wrote a post about building a monster Virtual Machine using PowerShell on Microsoft Azure. Since then, Microsoft has released version 2 of the Azure Resource Manager(ARM). This version allows us to define a Virtual Machine, its data disks and its Desired State Configuration (DSC) VM Extensions as a template. Seeing this as a great…

Microsoft Azure is all about the opportunity to push back on known boundaries. In the last couple of months, I dealt with some scenarios where on-premises Data Centers ran out of capacity. Consequently, we were not able to push our tests as far as we would have liked. Taking the work loads to Microsoft Azure gave us the opportunity to stretch workloads to their limits.

In one of these scenarios,…

Sometimes You Just Have to Scale Up!

In my last blog postI shared about how I use a Microsoft Azure Virtual Machine as my development machine. It’s been a month since I made this drastic change, and I must admit that it’s been pretty cool! The Azure Virtual Machine has provided me with more agility in my hectic schedule. I’ve been able to start my day from one machine, move to a different machine and continue from where I left off.…

Don’t be Fooled, Blob Lease Management is Tricky Business

Leasing Blobs on Windows Azure Blob Storage Service establishes a lock for write and delete operations. The lock duration can be 15 to 60 seconds, or can be infinite.

Personally prefer to lease a blob for a short period of time, which I renew until I decide to release the lease. To some, it might seem more convenient to lease a blob indefinitely and  to release it when they’re done. But on Window…

Scaling #Azure Cloud Services to Zero

The Challenge

As developers, we deal with lots of complexity, and this is a good thing. It forces us to be creative, and sometimes to go beyond our known universe to overcome challenges.

Microsoft Azure is designed to help us make the right choices. It imposes performance targets through a multitude of mechanisms like throttling and quotas. One of which, I’m sure you have come to know, is that we…

Scaling an FTP Ingestion Service

Making an FTP Ingestion Service Highly Available (HA) can be a challenge. On Azure, we can take advantage of the Microsoft Azure Traffic Manager to direct users to the closest FTP Server. In this specific scenario, we assume that all FTP Servers are configured the same way and that users only have write access. When a document is uploaded over FTP, it is moved to a