Microsoft has announced an important new update for Azure Blob Storage. More specifically, the company has increased the maximum file size limit. In doing so, Block Blobs now support a greater range of scenarios and meet the needs of Azure customers needing to store large amounts of data. Microsoft announced the new file size limit in a blog post on Wednesday.
The company says that increasing the file size limit from 195GB to 4.77TB makes Azure Blob Storage more diverse. In the blog post, the Azure team discusses customer needs for large file sizes to store bigger data sets. From media storing and processing of 4K and 8K videos, to scientific research and DNA sequencing, Azure Blob Storage is now better equipped to deal with demand.
As well as increasing file size, Microsoft has also increased the maximum allowable block size. The new block size limit if 100MB, is again a significant increase over the former 4MB allowance. The company has not compromised on the number of blocks, still allowing 50,000 blocks in a single Blob.
Mutability is still available on Azure Block Blobs. This allows customers to upload, delete, and manage data blocks without having to upload the entire blob. Because of larger file sizes, Microsoft says mutable blocks are now more cost effective and perform better.
Availability
Microsoft adds the new enhanced size capabilities are available instantly to all Azure Storage Blob customers in all supported regions. The company has also detailed the various support languages for Block Blobs:
“Larger Block Blobs are supported by the most recent release of the .NET Client Library (version 8.0.0), with support for Java, Node.js and AzCopy rolling out over the next few weeks. You can also directly use the REST API as always. Larger Block Blobs are supported by REST API version 2016-05-31 and later. There is nothing new to learn about the APIs, so you can start uploading larger Block Blobs right away.”