This is a continuation of an article that describes operational considerations for hosting solutions on Azure public cloud.

1. Azure (global) supports FileStorage. Azure Stack Hub does not support.

2. Azure (global) supports General Purpose V1, V2, and Blob storage accounts while Azure Stack Hub is general-purpose v1 only. Prefer V2 because it provides Blob, queue, file and table storage with LRS, GRS, RA-GRS redundancy options

3. Azure Resource Manager provides options for moving a resource to a different subscription or a different resource group. ARM deployments come with full-fledged functionality, scalability and security. 

4. If a storage account must be moved, then it must first be copied and then AzCopy can be used to move the data.

5. When an application is migrated to Azure, its storage can remain the same format as before. For example, if file storage was used, NFSv3 can continue to be used by using Azure Storage V2.

6. General-purpose v2 accounts deliver the lowest per-gigabyte capacity prices for Azure Storage, as well as industry-competitive transaction prices. General-purpose v2 accounts support default account access tiers of hot or cool and blob level tiering between hot, cool, or archive.

7. Archive storage tier does not provide immediate data access. That can take hours to rehydrate. If we need immediate access, change the access tier to hot or cool. A v1 storage account can be upgraded to either hot or cool storage tier.

8. Costs for storage tier is based on amount of data stored depending on the access tier, the data access cost, the transaction cost, the geo-replication data transfer cost, the outbound data transfer cost, and the changing storage access tier. The primary access pattern for the blob storage in terms of reads and writes and their comparisons determines the cost savings. All storage accesses can be monitored, and metrics emitted include capacity costs, transaction costs, and data transfer costs.

9. Elastic pools can help manage and scale multiple databases in Azure SQL Database.  Traditionally, there were two options: over-provision resources based on peak usage and overpay, or Under-provision to save cost, at the expense of performance and customer satisfaction during peaks. Elastic pools solve this problem by ensuring that databases get the performance resources they need when they need it. They provide a simple resource allocation mechanism within a predictable budget

10. Conditional access policies can be leveraged on Azure resources to enforce criteria from security standpoint. For example, if we wanted to configure MFA on all user authentication, we would set it on the Azure AD as the MFA conditional access. Common conditional access policies involve blocking legacy authentications and requiring MFA for all users.

11. On the other hand, the Privileged Identity Management is a service from Azure AD that can help with management, control and monitoring of important resources in the organization. It provides just in time privileged access to Azure resources such as storage accounts, assigns time-bound access and requires approval. It can also enforce MFA to activate any role.

12. B2B collaboration can be setup with Azure AD. External users can be invited as a guest but they must authenticate against their home organization so they can’t have access as a guest if they no longer have access to their home organization.

13. Securing privileged access for hybrid and cloud deployments in Azure AD requires changes to processes as well as resources such as the use of host defenses, user account protections and identity management.