Using Azure Storage for media files

Question

I'm in the very early stages of a project that will be hosted using Azure Web Sites. The team developing this project is most familiar with Azure SQL and Blob Storage. The product will host a high number of mp3 and wma audio files, which will be delivered to client applications on request. This is being built using WebAPI.

The audio files will be uploaded by the end users. I'm wondering if they should be stored in blob storage, or in an Azure SQL table as some kind of bytestream, or perhaps another option that I'm not aware of.

What's the recommended approach to storing a high number of audio files in a way that works with Azure Web Sites? I'm using Entity Framework Code-First in case it matters.

Answer 1

Windows Azure SQL Database will become expensive quickly as a place to store audio files. You should store the files themselves in blob storage and keep the url location in your SQL database.