Azure Blob Storage

Storing artifacts using Azure Blob Storage

The Azure Artifact Store is an Artifact Store flavor provided with the Azure ZenML integration that uses the Azure Blob Storage managed object storage service to store ZenML artifacts in an Azure Blob Storage container.

When would you want to use it?

Running ZenML pipelines with the local Artifact Store is usually sufficient if you just want to evaluate ZenML or get started quickly without incurring the trouble and the cost of employing cloud storage services in your stack. However, the local Artifact Store becomes insufficient or unsuitable if you have more elaborate needs for your project:

if you want to share your pipeline run results with other team members or stakeholders inside or outside your organization

if you have other components in your stack that are running remotely (e.g. a Kubeflow or Kubernetes Orchestrator running in a public cloud).

if you outgrow what your local machine can offer in terms of storage space and need to use some form of private or public storage service that is shared with others

if you are running pipelines at scale and need an Artifact Store that can handle the demands of production-grade MLOps

In all these cases, you need an Artifact Store that is backed by a form of public cloud or self-hosted shared object storage service.

You should use the Azure Artifact Store when you decide to keep your ZenML artifacts in a shared object storage and if you have access to the Azure Blob Storage managed service. You should consider one of the other Artifact Store flavors if you don't have access to the Azure Blob Storage service.

How do you deploy it?

The Azure Artifact Store flavor is provided by the Azure ZenML integration, you need to install it on your local machine to be able to register an Azure Artifact Store and add it to your stack:

zenml integration install azure -y