Microsoft Azure Storage Release –Append Blob, New Azure File Service Features and Client Side Encryption General Availability

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 Azure File Service. In detail, we are adding the following:

1. Append Blob with a new AppendBlock API

A new blob type, the append blob, is now available. All writes to an append blob are added sequentially to the end of the blob, making it optimal for logging scenarios. Append blobs support an Append Block operation for adding blocks to the blob. Once a block is added with Append Block, it is immediately available to be read; no further commits are necessary. The block cannot be modified once it has been added.

Please read Getting Started with Blob Storage for more details.

2. Azure File Service

A number of new features are available for the Azure File Service (in preview – with technical support available), including:

Check out our Azure Files Preview Update blog to learn more. Also, read the How to use Azure File storage with PowerShell and .NET getting started to learn how to use these new features.

If you’re not familiar with CORS or SAS signatures, you’ll find the following documentation helpful:

3. Client-Side Encryption

We are also announcing general availability for the .NET client-side encryption capability that has been in preview since April. In addition to enabling encryption of Blobs, Tables and Queues we also have support for Append Blobs. Please read Get Started with Client-Side Encryption for Microsoft Azure Storage for more details.

4. Azure Storage Client Library and Tooling Updates

We have also released new versions of our .NET, Java, C++, Node.js, and Android client libraries which provide support for the new 2015-02-21 Storage Version. For tooling, we've released new versions of AzCopy. Check out Getting Started with the AzCopy Command-Line Utility to learn more.  We've also released Storage updates to Azure PowerShell and Azure CLI.

 

We hope you will find these features useful. As always, please let us know if you have any further questions either via forum or comments on this post.

Thanks!

Azure Storage Team