Where to store binary format database when uploading to Azure in order to reduce package size?

Question

We are using the city database GeoLiteCity in our C# web site hosted on Azure.

As they recommend, we use the binary: GeoLiteCity.dat. This file is included in our project.

The problem is that the file weights roughly 28 Mo. As the GeoLiteCity.dat is present both in the source code and in the bin folder, every time we deploy to Azure, the package size is huge.

Is there a way for us to reduce the size of the package while still using the same database?

We already use blobs for our static content, as advised in this question, but is it possible to do the same with .dat file ?

EDIT: It's a read only database.

Answer 1

Since this is a read-only database, have you consider using Azure Drive? That way, you could just have a single virtual hard-drive stored in blob storage and mount it has read-only in every single instance you need.