MS Azure Blob storage for music files

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jmcc
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MS Azure Blob storage for music files

Post by jmcc »

Hi - I've started using MS Azure quite a lot lately and was wondering if there wasn't a way to store music files in the Azure Blob cloud and then access them via MediaMonkey for PC or Android from anywhere. As they're accessible via http/s, can have metadata associated with them and are a cheap storage medium with built in redundancy it seems to make perfect sense. I'm thinking of a similar interface to DLNA which after all, just uses http to stream files, which this would also do. To me the difference is just the ability to update the MM database from a different type of file storage and then point to it for playback.

Does this make sense?

Best
John
jiri
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Re: MS Azure Blob storage for music files

Post by jiri »

MM5 already has some limited cloud sync features (e.g. GDrive, OneDrive, ...), is this what you mean?

Jiri
jmcc
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Re: MS Azure Blob storage for music files

Post by jmcc »

Hi Jiri - Azure is Microsoft's cloud offering for professionals, but their BLOB storage works out at 0.01 USD/Gb so is pretty good value (plus there is built in geo-redundancy etc.). Check out https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/prici ... age/blobs/ for details. There's no "file system" so each BLOB is just an individual container of files, each of which can have associated metadata. This to me is the perfect repository for music files (and photos, etc.). Access to download each file is just a url and these can be public or private, so it's very similar to the DLNA mechanism. Uploading files is achieved programatically.
jiri
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Re: MS Azure Blob storage for music files

Post by jiri »

Yes, I know Azure, I just meant that there's already a similar cloud implementation in MM5. Certainly Azure support could also be added, as there's a modular architecture for any cloud storage providers in MM5. That said, e.g. OneDrive or GDrive pricing is lower and so it's probably even more suitable for the purpose. Or do you see any other value in Azure for usage as a media storage?

Jiri
jmcc
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Re: MS Azure Blob storage for music files

Post by jmcc »

No - I was just thinking of it as a storage medium. My only reason for favouring it over OneDrive was faster access over the network due to it being more pro orientated and lacking the overhead of a file system.
jiri
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Re: MS Azure Blob storage for music files

Post by jiri »

OK, my guess is that it wouldn't be too big advantage in real usage, but I can be wrong. Anyway, it definitely can be added as a provider to the MM5 cloud sync framework... ;-)

Jiri
jmcc
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Re: MS Azure Blob storage for music files

Post by jmcc »

Excellent - thanks.
zarb0z
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Re: MS Azure Blob storage for music files

Post by zarb0z »

Blob storage is 2.5 cents a gig, not a penny a gig. What is $0.01/GB is what's called "cool tier" storage, which requires an intermediary filer of some kind (extra monthly cost if you're not writing and forgetting, the way Cool Tier is designed), which is an extra cost per month: at least $14 for the small, shared-core boxes.

Regardless, you will pay egress bandwidth charges on this solution. It adds up, especially if you're playing lossless files all the time.

Source: long-time Azure user and I've already tried this. Moderate usage costs me about $30/mo more than my normal spend, and it's not more convenient than having everything on a 5TB HDD that you carry around with you. PLUS...if you're at work, you are going to skew HR's perception of how much time you spend on the Web.

Feel free to check my work against a 2TB library accessed 8 hrs/day for 20 days a month:
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...or with your own particulars:
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/calculator/
jmcc
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Re: MS Azure Blob storage for music files

Post by jmcc »

Hi- as I understood it the difference between hot and cold storage was purely SLA and pricing based - there is no difference from the client application perspective. For a 2TB media database running 8 hours a day (lets say 140 songs per day of 40Mb at 3.5 mins each - 170Gb/month), it adds up as follows (€):
  • Cool - storage = €17 + retrieval = €1.50 - total €18.50/month
  • Hot - storage = €33.20 + retrieval = free - total €33.20/month
Bandwidth pricing is the same for both solutions at an additional €18/month.

though in my case I already backup my media files to cool blob storage, so there is only the €1.50 additional cost per month. I also don't have Mediamonkey running for 8 hours per day; it is in fact far less than this - 8 hours per week would be closer to the mark.

I'm also a Microsoft Partner and therefore don't pay any of the charges above anyway as they're included in my subscription.
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Re: MS Azure Blob storage for music files

Post by Peke »

Hi,
Do not get me wrong but for ~600$ a year you can buy NAS 2x4TB HDDs Set in RAID1 and have Instant access to all your files and with little effort you can even set your own cloud server.

Somehow things do not add there. Especially as I have not included time and effort to upload such amount of data to cloud.
Best regards,
Peke
MediaMonkey Team lead QA/Tech Support guru
Admin of Free MediaMonkey addon Site HappyMonkeying
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