Azure Blob Storage: The Cloud Primitive You End Up Using Everywhere (Part 1)
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A clear, cloud‑agnostic introduction to Azure’s object storage foundation
Object storage is one of those technologies that quietly sits beneath almost every modern system. You don’t think about it much, but everything from mobile apps to ML pipelines to data lakes depends on it. In Azure, the foundational service for this is Blob Storage — simple on the surface, but surprisingly deep once you start building real systems.
This post walks through Blob Storage the way developers actually think: mental models, tradeoffs, and architectural consequences. No marketing gloss. Just the core ideas that make the service useful.
1. What Azure Blob Storage Actually Is
Azure Blob Storage is Microsoft’s object storage service for unstructured data. If you’ve used AWS S3, the concept will feel familiar: you store “blobs” (objects) inside containers inside a storage account.
It’s designed for:
- Application assets
- Logs and telemetry
- Backups and archives
- Data lakes
- ML training datasets
- Static websites
- Any workload where you need cheap, durable, infinitely scalable storage
Blob Storage is one of those services you end up using whether you planned to or not.
2. The Mental Model (The Part Most Docs Overcomplicate)
Blob Storage has a simple three‑layer hierarchy:
- Storage Account — the top‑level boundary
- Container — like a folder, but not really
- Blob — the actual object
That’s it. No nested folders, no complex directory semantics. Everything else is convention layered on top.
This simplicity is why object storage scales so well. The system doesn’t care about directory trees; it just stores objects with keys.
3. The Three Blob Types (And When They Actually Matter)
Azure gives you three blob types, each optimized for a different pattern:
Block Blobs
The default. Great for files, images, documents, backups, and anything uploaded in chunks.
Append Blobs
Optimized for logs. You can only append to them, which makes them ideal for sequential writes.
Page Blobs
Used for virtual machine disks. Random read/write access, fixed-size pages.
If you’re not doing VM disks or log pipelines, you’ll almost always use block blobs.
4. Access Tiers: The Real Cost Lever
Azure Blob Storage has tiered pricing so you can match cost to access patterns:
- Hot — frequent access
- Cool — infrequent access
- Cold — long-term, cheaper
- Archive — ultra-cheap, but retrieval is slow
The trick is that storage gets cheaper as you go down the tiers, but access gets more expensive.
This is where architectural thinking matters: you’re not just storing data, you’re shaping its lifecycle.
5. How Blob Storage Fits Into Real Architectures
Blob Storage isn’t just a place to dump files. It’s a backbone service that shows up everywhere:
- Data lakes (ADLS Gen2 is built on top of it)
- Event-driven pipelines (Functions, Event Grid, Logic Apps)
- ML workflows (datasets, checkpoints, model artifacts)
- Static website hosting
- Backup/restore strategies
- Serverless architectures
If you understand Blob Storage, you understand a big chunk of Azure’s design philosophy.
6. Uploading a File Across Azure, GCP, and AWS (A Cross‑Cloud Comparison)
One of the cleanest ways to understand object storage is to see how similar it looks across clouds. Python is perfect for this because the SDKs are readable and the mental model stays front‑and‑center.
Azure Blob Storage
from azure.storage.blob import BlobClient
blob = BlobClient.from_connection_string(
conn_str="DefaultEndpointsProtocol=https;AccountName=myaccount;AccountKey=MY_KEY;",
container_name="mycontainer",
blob_name="myfile.txt"
)
with open("localfile.txt", "rb") as data:
blob.upload_blob(data, overwrite=True)
Google Cloud Storage
from google.cloud import storage
client = storage.Client()
bucket = client.bucket("my-bucket")
blob = bucket.blob("myfile.txt")
blob.upload_from_filename("localfile.txt")
AWS S3
import boto3
s3 = boto3.client("s3")
s3.upload_file(
Filename="localfile.txt",
Bucket="my-bucket",
Key="myfile.txt"
)
The Symmetry
Across all three:
- You create a client
- You point it at a bucket/container
- You upload a file
Different clouds, same mental model.
That’s the point: once you understand object storage in one ecosystem, you understand it everywhere.
7. Why Blob Storage Matters More Than You Think
Cloud platforms are full of abstractions, but the primitives are what give you leverage. Blob Storage is one of those primitives. It’s simple, durable, and foundational. Once you understand it, the rest of Azure’s data ecosystem starts to make sense.
And if you’re building content that helps developers think clearly about cloud systems — not just follow tutorials — Blob Storage is the perfect place to start.
Aaron Rose is a software engineer and technology writer at tech-reader.blog and the author of Think Like a Genius.
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