CODEWITHSUNDEEP
azureazure-blob-storage
JD.
JD.

Reputation: 15531

Do I need Azure blob storage or just a simple web server on a VM?

I have a VM on Azure which is my content management system using nodejs and mongodb.

One of things the CMS does is have a social sharing function where html pages are created and users are given the url to this page.

I expect a large volume of users (probably 5000 at a given time) access the http pages. I do not want this load to be on the same server as my CMS.

So I was thinking about moving the html pages to another server. My question is do I need to look at Azure blob storage to do this or should I just use another VM and put files there?

The files are very small and minified. I want to keep my costs down whilst at the same time if I get more than 5000 requests, the server should auto scale.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 309

Answers (1)

David Makogon
David Makogon

Reputation: 71028

The question itself is somewhat subjective/opinion-soliciting. And how you solve this problem is really up to you.

But from an objective perspective:

Blobs themselves are not the same as local file storage. If you're going to store content in them, either your CMS needs to support them natively or you're going to need to build that support into it (if that's even possible). Since they have their own REST API (and related SDKs) you cannot simple do file I/O operations against them. They are, however, accessible via URI (which may be made private or public).

Azure VMs store their disks (vhd's) in page blobs (so, you're already using blob storage technically speaking). And each VM may have attached disks (1TB each) also in page blobs, two disks per core (so a dual-core VM supports 4 attached 1TB disks). Just like your OS disk, these attached disks are durable, in blob storage. A CMS may access an attached disk once it's formatted and given a drive letter (Windows) or mounted (Linux). EDIT - forgot to mention: If you go with the attached-disk approach, you need to consider the fact that these disks are per-VM. That is, they are not shared across multiple VM's (in the event you scale your CMS to multiple instances).

Azure File Service is an SMB share sitting atop Azure Blob Storage. Again, durable storage, and drive-mappable. EDIT unlike attached disks, Azure File Service SMB shares are accessible across multiple VM's.

Upvotes: 3

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