Windows Azure Storage Resources
The following are some key resources to understand and use Windows Azure Storage. The online MSDN documentation and Forums:Windows Azure Storage Client Library (Blobs, Drives, Tables, Queues)Windows...
View ArticleWindows Azure Drive Demo at MIX 2010
With a Windows Azure Drive, applications running in the Windows Azure cloud can use existing NTFS APIs to access a network attached durable drive. The durable drive is actually a Page Blob formatted...
View ArticleUsing Windows Azure Page Blobs and How to Efficiently Upload and Download...
This post refers to the Storage Client Library shipped in SDK 1.2. Windows Azure SDK 1.3 provides additional Page Blob functionality via the CloudPageBlob class. The current release can be downloaded...
View ArticleWindows Azure Storage Explorers
We get a few queries every now and then on the availability of utilities for Windows Azure Storage and decided to put together a list of the storage explorers we know of. The tools are all Windows...
View ArticleProtecting Your Blobs Against Application Errors
A question we get asked is the following - Do applications need to backup data stored in Windows Azure Storage if Windows Azure Storage already stores multiple replicas of the data? For business...
View ArticleUpdating Metadata during Copy Blob and Snapshot Blob
This issue has been resolved for copy blob operations in the Windows Azure SDK 1.3 release which can be downloaded here. The snapshot issue will be resolved in a future release.When you copy or...
View ArticleStream Position Not Reset on Retries in PageBlob WritePages API
The issue is resolved in the Windows Azure SDK 1.3 release which can be downloaded here.We recently came across a bug in the StorageClient library in which WritePages fails on retries because the...
View ArticleNagle’s Algorithm is Not Friendly towards Small Requests
We had recommended in a forum post about how turning off Nagling can greatly improve throughput for Table Inserts and Updates. We have also been seeing a lot of improvement when application deals with...
View ArticleStorage Client Hotfix Release – September 2010
The issues are resolved in the Windows Azure SDK 1.3 release which can be downloaded here.1. Application crashes with unhandled NullReferenceException that is raised on a callback threadStorage Client...
View ArticleWindows Azure Storage Client Library: CloudBlob.DownloadToFile() may not...
Update 3/09/011: The bug is fixed in the Windows Azure SDK March 2011 release. SummaryThere is an issue in the Windows Azure Storage Client Library that can lead to unexpected behavior when utilizing...
View ArticleWindows Azure Blob MD5 Overview
OverviewWindows Azure Blob service provides mechanisms to ensure data integrity both at the application and transport layers. This post will detail these mechanisms from the service and client...
View ArticleWindows Azure Storage Client Library: Parallel Single Blob Upload Race...
Update 11/06/11: The bug is fixed in the Windows Azure SDK September release. There is a race condition in the current Windows Azure Storage Client Library that could potentially throw an unhandled...
View ArticleWindows Azure Storage Client Library: Rewinding stream position less than...
Update 3/09/011: The bug is fixed in the Windows Azure SDK March 2011 release. In the current Windows Azure storage client library, BlobStream.Read() may read less than the requested number of bytes...
View ArticleWindows Azure Blobs: Improved HTTP Headers for Resume on Download and a...
In the new 2011-08-18 version of the Windows Azure Blob service, we have made some changes to improve browser download and streaming for some media players. We also provided an extension to Blob...
View ArticleBlob Download Bug in Windows Azure SDK 1.5
Update: We have now released a fix for this issue. The download blob methods in this version throw an IOException if the connection is closed while downloading the blob, which is the same behavior...
View ArticleWindows Azure Storage Client for Java Blob Features
We have released the Storage Client for Java with support for Windows Azure Blobs, Queues, and Tables. Our goal is to continue to improve the development experience when writing cloud applications...
View ArticleGetting the Page Ranges of a Large Page Blob in Segments
One of the blob types supported by Windows Azure Storage is the Page Blob. Page Blobs provide efficient storage of sparse data by physically storing only pages that have been written and not cleared....
View ArticleCharacter Encoding Issues Related to Copy Blob API
This blog applies to the 2011-08-18 storage version or earlier of the Copy Blob API and the Windows Azure Storage Client Library version 1.6.Two separate problems are discussed in this blog:Over REST,...
View ArticleIntroducing Microsoft Azure File Service
We are excited to announce the preview of the Microsoft Azure File service. The Azure File service exposes file shares using the standard SMB 2.1 protocol. Applications running in Azure can now easily...
View ArticleMicrosoft Azure Storage Release –Append Blob, New Azure File Service Features...
We are excited to announce new capabilities in the Azure Storage Service and updates to our Storage Client Libraries. We have a new blob type, Append Blob, as well as a number of new features for the...
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