Scale Your Global Website with Fast, Reliable Azure Blob Storage

 

Scenario:

You’re the architect for "GlobalTrend Innovations," a booming e-commerce company with a website showcasing product images, videos, and customer stories. With a global customer base and surging demand, your content must load quickly, remain accessible, and be protected from errors. Your task: build a high-availability Azure Blob Storage solution to store critical assets, enable fast public access, and ensure easy recovery and version control.

Key Tasks:

1. Create a high-availability storage account.
2. Enable anonymous public access for content delivery.
3. Set up a blob container for website assets.
4. Activate soft delete for file recovery.
5. Enable blob versioning to track changes.

Creating a High-Availability Storage Account for My Public Website

I needed a reliable, high-availability storage solution to support my company’s public website, ensuring fast access to content for users worldwide. Here’s how I set up an Azure storage account to meet those needs.

Steps:

1. Navigate to Storage Accounts: In the Azure portal, I searched for "Storage accounts" and selected it from the results.

2. Create a New Storage Account: I clicked + Create to start setting up the account.

3. Set Up a Resource Group: I chose to create a new resource group, gave it a meaningful name, and clicked OK to confirm.

4. Name the Storage Account: I named the storage account publicwebsite, adding a unique identifier (like a number or my initials) to ensure the name was unique, as Azure requires.

5. Set Up Redundancy for High Availability: In the Data management section, I selected the Redundancy blade. I chose Read-access Geo-redundant storage (RA-GRS) to replicate data to a secondary region with read access, ensuring availability during outages. I reviewed the primary and secondary location information to confirm my data’s reach.

   
   
   

6. Enable Anonymous Public Access: In the Settings section, I selected the Configuration blade. I enabled the Allow blob anonymous access setting so customers can view website content (like images and videos) without a login, then clicked Save to apply the changes.

   
   
   

7. Review and create.

Adding a Blob Storage Container with Anonymous Read Access

With my storage account set up, I wanted to create a blob storage container to store my website’s images and ensure customers can view them without logging in. Here’s how I did it:

Steps:

1. Access the Containers Blade: In my storage account, I went to the Data storage section and selected the Containers blade.
2. Create a New Container: I clicked + Container to start setting up a new container.
3. Name the Container: I named the container public (for example), keeping it simple and relevant for my website’s assets.
4. Configure Anonymous Read Access: Since customers should view the images without authentication, I configured the container’s Public access level to Blob (anonymous read access for blobs only) to allow open access to the content.
   
   
   
5. Create the Container: I clicked Create to finalize the setup.

Practice File Upload and Access Testing

1. Upload any small file (e.g., image or text) to the public container.

2. In the container, click Upload, choose your file, and confirm.

3. Close the upload window, refresh the page, and verify the file appears.

4. Click the uploaded file, go to the Overview tab, and copy the URL.

   
   
   

5. Paste the URL into a browser tab to test access.

• Images will display directly; other file types may download.

Configure Soft Delete (30 Days)

1. Go to the Overview section of your storage account.

2. Click on Properties.

3. In the Blob service section, select Blob soft delete.

4. Check Enable soft delete for blobs.

5. Set Keep deleted blobs for to 30 days.

   
   
   

6. (Optional) You can also enable soft delete for containers.

7. Click Save to apply the settings.

Practice Restoring a Deleted File with Soft Delete

1. Go to your container where the file was uploaded.

2. Select the file and click Delete.

3. Confirm by selecting OK.

4. On the container's Overview page, toggle Show deleted blobs (next to the search box).

5. Find your deleted file, click the ellipsis (…) on the far right, and select Undelete.

6. Refresh the container and confirm the file has been restored.

   

Configuring Blob Versioning to Track Website Document Updates

Since it’s crucial to keep track of different versions of my website’s product documents, I decided to enable blob versioning in my storage account. This ensures I can manage updates and restore previous versions if needed. Here’s how I set it up on May 26, 2025, at 12:25 PM CEST, and tested it to confirm it works.

Steps:

1. 1. Go to the Overview Blade: I navigated to the Overview blade of my storage account in the Azure portal.
   2. Locate Blob Versioning Settings: In the Properties section, I found the Blob service section and selected the Versioning setting.
   3. Enable Blob Versioning: I checked the Enable versioning for blobs checkbox to turn on versioning, ensuring every change to my blobs would be tracked.
   4. Review Version Retention Options: I noticed options to either keep all versions indefinitely or set a policy to delete older versions after a specific period, but I left it at the default for now to retain all versions.
   5. Save Changes: I clicked Save to apply the versioning settings.
      
      
      
      
      
      
   6. Test Blob Versioning:
      • I uploaded a new version of a product document file to my public container, which overwrote the existing file.
      • To confirm versioning worked, I checked the container and selected the option to Show deleted blobs or view version history. Sure enough, the previous version of my file was listed, ready for me to restore if needed.

   With blob versioning enabled, I can now confidently update my website’s documents, knowing I can easily track and restore previous versions whenever necessary. This gives me peace of mind as I manage my global website’s critical content!