Database Reference
In-Depth Information
•
North Central US
•
North Europe
•
South Central US
Southeast Asia
In addition, you can create an
affinity group
that lets you keep certain Azure services together. Such
a group creates a geographic dependency between Windows and data services deployed in the Microsoft
Azure platform. If Microsoft is obligated to move a service to another geolocation for regulatory reasons,
the related services will likely move along. For example, if you develop an Azure service that depends on
a SQL Azure database, you may want to ensure that they both reside in the same geolocation and that
they belong to the same affinity group.
Additional locations will be added over time. As a result, you may need to reevaluate on a regular
basis whether a service is deployed in the most appropriate geographic location.
•
Storing Data in Azure
As you can imagine, cloud computing is all about storing data in a simple yet scalable manner. The
Microsoft Azure platform doesn't disappoint and offers a variety of storage models that you can choose
from. This section summarizes the four ways you can store your data in Azure; three of these approaches
are considered part of the Azure services.
Figure 1-2 provides an overview of the storage options and the available access methods. The set of
storage options provided by Windows Azure is referred to as
Windows Azure storage
, which includes
blobs, tables, and queues. Windows Azure storage can be accessed directly from a corporate
environment using HTTP/S calls, providing a simple hook into the Microsoft Azure platform. In addition
to using Windows Azure storage, consumers can make requests directly to a SQL Azure database using
ADO.NET or ODBC, because SQL Azure supports the Tabular Data Stream (TDS) protocol that SQL
Server uses. As a result, applications and services connecting to a SQL Server database can just as easily
connect to a SQL Azure database.
Figure 1-2.
Microsoft Azure data storage access
Following are further details of the four storage types:
