Andrew Hoefling

Azure Blob Storage provides a powerful file storage API for saving files of any size that can then integrate with you application. A common request is being able to store simple metadata with the file and in the past I would create a simple database to store that data. Built-in to Azure Blob Storage is the ability to store metadata for the blobs usins a Key-Value-Pair of strings. This helps reduces software complexity while meeting the demands of metadata for blobs.

Shared Access Signature (SAS) provides a secure way to upload and download files from Azure Blob Storage without sharing the connection string. A real world example would be to retrieve a Shared Access Signature on a mobile, desktop or any client side app to process the functions. This removes any need to share an all access connection string saved on a client app that can be hijacked by a bad actor.

Azure Blob Storage is a great tool for storing any type of file for easy access in your app. The APIs allow you to easily upload and download files of any type which integrates with many popular languages and frameworks. If the SDK isn't supported you can always fall back right to the RESTful endpoints (which I wouldn't recommend, unless you absolutely have to).

When integrating with Azure Services regardless of what the service is, you are commonly required to provide a Tenant ID which is sometimes refered to as a Directory ID. This is a GUID that is used commonly for API access. Some tools skip the Tenant ID and request a Tennant Name? What is that?