Provide storage for the public website.

Introduction

Imagine your company’s website is scaling globally, but a regional outage just took your product images offline. We all know data is vulnerable to regional outages, accidental deletions, and overwrites. To a customer, the site looks broken. To a business, that's lost revenue.

I recently secured an Azure Storage for a high-demand public website. From enabling 21-day "Time Machine" restorations with Soft Delete to managing document history via Blob Versioning.

In this post, I’m breaking down how I configured the mission-critical storage solution using Azure Blob Storage. I’ll walk you through how I implemented Read-Access Geo-Redundant Storage (RA-GRS) and fail-safe data protection features to ensure that global users never see a "404 Not Found" again.

Here is my roadmap for deploying resilient, high-availability cloud storage.

Skilling tasks

• Create a storage account with high availability.


• Ensure the storage account has anonymous public access.


• Create a blob storage container for the website documents.


• Enable soft delete so files can be easily restored.


• Enable blob versioning.

Create a storage account with high availability.

Create a storage account to support the public website.

Step 1: In the portal, search for and select Storage accounts.

Step 2: Select + Create.

Step 3: For resource group select new. Give your resource group a name and select OK.

Step 4: Set the Storage account name to public website. Make sure the storage account name is unique by adding an identifier.

Step 5: Take the defaults for other settings.

Step 6: Select Review + Create, and then Create.

Step 7: Wait for the storage account to deploy, and then select Go to resource.

This storage requires high availability if there’s a regional outage. Additionally, enable read access to the secondary region.

Step 1: In the storage account, in the Data management section, select the Redundancy blade.

Step 2: Ensure Read-access Geo-redundant storage is selected.

Step 3: Review the primary and secondary location information.

Information on the public website should be accessible without requiring customers to login.

Step 1: In the storage account, in the Settings section, select the Configuration blade.

Step 2: Ensure the Allow blob anonymous access setting is Enabled.

Step 3: Be sure to Save your changes.

Create a blob storage container with anonymous read access

The public website has various images and documents. Create a blob storage container for the content.

Step 1: In your storage account, in the Data storage section, select the Containers blade.

Step 2: Select + Container.

Step 3: Ensure the Name of the container is public.

Step 4: Select Create.

Customers should be able to view the images without being authenticated. Configure anonymous read access for the public container blobs.

Step 1: Select your public container.

Step 2: On the Overview blade, select Change access level.

Step 3: Ensure the Public access level is Blob (anonymous read access for blobs only).

Step 4: Select OK.

Practice uploading files and testing access.

For testing, upload a file to the public container. The type of file doesn’t matter. A small image or text file is a good choice.

Step 1: Ensure you are viewing your container.

Step 2: Select Upload.

Step 3: Browse to files and select a file. Browse to a file of your choice.

Step 4: Select Upload.

Step 5: Close the upload window, Refresh the page and ensure your file was uploaded.

Determine the URL for your uploaded file. Open a browser and test the URL.

Step 1: Select your uploaded file.

Step 2: On the Overview tab, copy the URL.

Step 3: Paste the URL into a new browser tab.

Step 4: If you have uploaded an image file it will display in the browser. Other file types should be downloaded.

Configure soft delete

It’s important that the website documents can be restored if they’re deleted. Configure blob soft delete for 21 days.

Step 1: Go to the Overview blade of the storage account.

Step 2: On the Properties page, locate the Blob service section.

Step 3: Select the Blob soft delete setting.

Step 4: Ensure the Enable soft delete for blobs is checked.

Step 5: Change the Keep deleted blobs for (in days) setting to 21.

Step 6: Notice you can also Enable soft delete for containers.

Step 7: Don’t forget to Save your changes.

If something gets deleted, you need to practice using soft delete to restore the files.

Step 1: Navigate to your container where you uploaded a file.

Step 2: Select the file you uploaded and then select Delete.

Step 3: Select Delete to confirm deleting the file.

Step 4: On the container Overview page, toggle the slider Show deleted blobs. This toggle is to the right of the search box.

Step 5: Select your deleted file, and use the ellipses on the far right, to Undelete the file.

Step 6: Refresh the container and confirm the file has been restored.

Configure blob versioning

It’s important to keep track of the different website product document versions.

Step 1: Go to the Overview blade of the storage account.

Step 2: In the Properties section, locate the Blob service section.

Step 3: Select the Versioning setting.

Step 4: Ensure the Enable versioning for blobs checkbox is checked.

Step 5: Notice your options to keep all versions or delete versions after.

Step 6: Don’t forget to Save your changes.

As you have time experiment with restoring previous blob versions.

Step 1: Upload another version of your container file. This overwrites your existing file.

Step 2: Your previous file version is listed on Show deleted blobs page.

Why This Architecture Matters to a Business.

Setting up a storage account is easy but architecting a resilient, global data strategy is where the real value lies. Here is why these specific configurations are critical for any enterprise-level application:

• Disaster Recovery & Continuity (RA-GRS)
  By implementing Read-access Geo-redundant storage (RA-GRS), we move beyond simple backups.

The Business Impact: In the event of a regional Azure outage, the "Read-access" ensures the website stays up and images continue to load from a secondary region. This prevents lost sales and maintains brand reputation during a crisis.

• Mitigating Human Error (Soft Delete)
  Accidents happen sometimes. a developer might run a script with a typo, or a disgruntled employee could attempt to wipe data. Blob soft delete protects an individual blob, snapshot, or version from accidental deletes or overwrites by maintaining the deleted data in the system for a specified period of time.

The Business Impact: With a 21-day Soft Delete policy, I’ve created a "safety net." This allows for near-instant restoration of mission-critical documents without the massive time and cost overhead of traditional database restores.

• Data Sovereignty & Audit Trails (Blob Versioning)
  Marketing and legal documents are constantly evolving.
  Blob versioning maintains previous versions of a blob. When blob versioning is enabled, you can restore an earlier version of a blob to recover your data if it’s modified or deleted.

The Business Impact: Blob Versioning acts as a "Time Machine." It provides a clear audit trail of every change made to a file. If a new version of a customer success story is published with a legal error, we can roll back to the previous version in seconds, ensuring compliance and accuracy.

• Global Performance (Anonymous Public Access)
  For a global audience, every millisecond of latency equals a drop in conversion rates. When a container is configured for anonymous access, any client can read data in that container.

The Business Impact: By properly configuring Anonymous Public Access at the container level, we allow for seamless integration with Content Delivery Networks (CDNs). This ensures that a customer in London and a customer in Tokyo both experience lightning-fast load times for product media.

Conclusion

Building a storage solution for a global website is about more than just "cloud storage"—it’s about reliability, scalability, and disaster recovery. By implementing RA-GRS, Soft Delete, and Blob Versioning, I’ve created an environment that doesn't just host files, it protects the brand's reputation and ensures that mission-critical data is always a click away, even in the face of regional outages or accidental deletions.

In the cloud, "good enough" is a risk. Architecting for resilience is the only way to scale.