Guidance for storing time series data in Azure

The goal of this project is to assess basic ways of storing time series data in Azure.

Should I be using an existing solution?

There are a number of companies that specialize in cloud-based time series data historians. For projects with extremely large storage requirements, high-performance needs, or advanced features such as model-based compression or interpolation, it's advisable to look at the existing products on the market.

These third-party solutions may be much easier to implement versus creating an in-house solution.

High-Level Comparison of Popular Storage Approaches

Click on a storage solution header for details.

	SQL Database	Blob Storage	HBase	Azure Data Lake	OpenTSDB
Writes	Excellent			Excellent
Random Access Reads	Excellent	Poor		Poor
Batch Reads	Excellent	Good		Excellent
Aggregation	Good (TSQL)	Poor		Excellent
Storage Efficiency	Excellent	Excellent		Excellent
Cost	Configurable			Excellent
Interpolation				Excellent
Interoperability	Excellent			Poor

Storage Solutions Not Tested

• DocumentDB