Windows Azure Storage

TLDR

Windows Azure Storage (WAS) is a cloud storage system that offers virtually unlimited data storage, accessible from anywhere, with pay‑as‑you‑go pricing and durable replication across local and geographic sites, and it provides Blobs, Tables, and Queues for different storage needs. The paper aims to describe the WAS architecture, global namespace, and data model. It also details the resource provisioning, load balancing, and replication systems that support the service.

Abstract

Windows Azure Storage (WAS) is a cloud storage system that provides customers the ability to store seemingly limitless amounts of data for any duration of time. WAS customers have access to their data from anywhere at any time and only pay for what they use and store. In WAS, data is stored durably using both local and geographic replication to facilitate disaster recovery. Currently, WAS storage comes in the form of Blobs (files), Tables (structured storage), and Queues (message delivery). In this paper, we describe the WAS architecture, global namespace, and data model, as well as its resource provisioning, load balancing, and replication systems.