Blob Storage: Object Storage for the Cloud
Store unstructured data such as images, videos, and backups in Blob containers, and understand hot, cool, and archive access tiers.
What Is Azure Blob Storage?
Azure Blob Storage (Binary Large Object) is Azure's object storage solution for storing massive amounts of unstructured data — data that does not fit into a relational database schema. Examples include images, videos, audio files, PDF documents, log files, backups, and application binaries. Blob Storage is accessed via HTTP/HTTPS REST APIs, the Azure SDK, or the Azure CLI. It is one of the most widely used Azure services and the foundation for many data lake, media, and backup architectures.
Blob Storage Hierarchy
Blob Storage is organised in a three-level hierarchy: Storage Account → Container → Blob. A container is like a folder at the top level — it groups related blobs and defines the access policy for everything inside it. A blob is an individual object (file) stored within a container. Blob names can include forward slashes (/) to simulate a folder hierarchy (e.g., images/2024/photo.jpg), but Blob Storage is fundamentally flat — those slashes are part of the blob name, not real directories.
# Upload a file to a Blob container
az storage blob upload \
--account-name mystorageacct \
--container-name images \
--name 'photos/2024/sunset.jpg' \
--file ./sunset.jpgAll lessons in this course
- Azure Storage Accounts
- Blob Storage: Object Storage for the Cloud
- Azure Files and Queue Storage
- Disk Storage and Storage Security