Explore Azure Queue Storage

  • 3 minutes

Azure Queue Storage is a service for storing large numbers of messages. You access messages from anywhere in the world via authenticated calls using HTTP or HTTPS. A queue message can be up to 64 KB in size. A queue may contain millions of messages, up to the total capacity limit of a storage account. Queues are commonly used to create a backlog of work to process asynchronously.

The Queue service contains the following components:

Image showing components of the queue service

  • URL format: Queues are addressable using the URL format https://<storage account>.queue.core.windows.net/<queue>. For example, the following URL addresses a queue in the diagram above https://myaccount.queue.core.windows.net/images-to-download

  • Storage account: All access to Azure Storage is done through a storage account.

  • Queue: A queue contains a set of messages. All messages must be in a queue. The queue name must be all lowercase.

  • Message: A message, in any format, of up to 64 KB. For version 2017-07-29 or later, the maximum time-to-live can be any positive number, or -1 indicating that the message doesn't expire. If this parameter is omitted, the default time-to-live is seven days.