Storage types

Azure provides four types of general storage services as shown in the following diagram:

• Blob storage: This type of storage is best suitable for unstructured data such as documents, images, and other kinds of files. Blob storage can be hot or cold. Hot means that content within the blob storage is accessed frequently compared to the cold tier.
• Table storage: It is a NoSQL key-attribute data store. It should be used for structured data. The data is stored as entities.
• Queue storage: It provides reliable message storage.
• File storage: This is shared storage based on SMB protocol. It is typically used for storing and sharing files. This also stores unstructured data, but the main distinction is that it is sharable on the SMB protocol.

These four storage types cater to different architectural requirements and cover almost all types of data storage facilities.