Azure storage account: general purpose vs blob storage

Question

Having the need to store and access blobs which type of storage account is the most appropriate? Both types (general purpose and blob storage) seem to support blobs and in addition to this general purpose accounts allow selecting default or premium performance while blob storage accounts allow only default performance but on the other hand they also allow selecting the access tier (cool or hot).

In the end I find unclear what would be the best option.

Answer 1

A few differences between Blob and General Purpose Storage Accounts:

• Blob storage account only support blobs while General purpose storage accounts support blobs, files, queues & tables (some exception apply - please see note about replication below). So if you ever need these additional services, you may want to choose general purpose accounts over blob accounts.
• Blob storage account only supports block and append blobs while General purpose storage accounts support block, append & page blobs (some exception apply - please see note about replication below). So if you need to create virtual machines, you would want to choose general purpose accounts over blob accounts.
• Blob storage accounts support both Hot and Cool access tier while General purpose storage accounts only support Hot access tier. So if you need to use Cool access tier i.e. use storage primarily for near-shore archiving, you would want to choose blob accounts over general purpose accounts.

You may want to be careful in choosing replication type in general purpose accounts as features offered varies by replication types.

• LRS, GRS, RAGRS: Supports everything. Blobs (Block, Append, Page), Files, Queues & Tables.
• ZRS: Supports only block blobs and nothing else.
• Premium LRS: Supports only page blobs and nothing else.

Answer 2

Microsoft's guidance on this (as of 7/13/2018) recommends using General Purpose v2 (GPv2) Storage Accounts over Blob Storage accounts for two reasons I recently discovered (there might be more):

1. They offer more flexibility in terms of what you can store and do with them (Queues, Tables, Files and/or Blobs vs just Blobs). Ref: Microsoft Azure Documentation - Azure Storage account options

   Microsoft recommends using general-purpose v2 storage accounts over Blob storage accounts for most scenarios.

2. There are more integration options with GPv2 accounts including Azure Function Triggers via Event Grid. Ref: Microsoft Azure Documentation - Azure Blob storage bindings for Azure Functions

   Blob-only storage accounts are supported for blob input and output bindings but not for blob triggers. Blob storage triggers require a general-purpose storage account.