ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT MICROSOFT AZURE
Storage is a concern for all the cloud users and we are here to help you with the same. Microsoft Azure helps in providing different features in the Azure Storage for storing as well as accessing your data existing in the cloud.
The Azure Files provides a proper SMB interface, libraries to the client and a REST interface that permits the access from anywhere to the stored files. It also tends to offer a compelling alternative to the traditional Direct Attached Storage (DAS) and Storage Area Network (SAN) solutions, which are often known to be complex as well as expensive for installation, configuration and operation. Azure Blobs exist to give client libraries and an REST interface that allows the unstructured data to be warehoused and accessed at a massive scale in block blobs. It supports Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 for the purpose of providing enterprise big data analytics solutions. Similarly, Azure disks, provides the client libraries and a REST interface. However, it allows the data to be persistently stored and accessed from an attached virtual hard disk.
When compared, each of these has its own unique features to hold on to. However, there also exist areas where their shortfalls lie. Let’s take a look at their features with a strong comparison to help you make the right choice for your cloud storage:
Durability: Durability can be one of the acing factors that need to be noticed before making a choice for your storage. If you are into choosing an option that holds a versatility in endurance, then Azure Blobs would be a good option as it holds a good durability of data in LRS, ZRS, GRS, RA-GRS when compared to Azure Files that holds a comparatively less endurance of data in only LRS, ZRS, GRS. However, when we talk about Azure files and disks, the durability lies in the scope of their storage. Where the disks are exclusive to a single virtual machine, the files aren’t exclusive to a single one and the access can be shared across multiple virtual machines.
Accessibility: Both Azure Blobs and files can be accessed by the REST APIs. However, the latter involves the standard fine system APIs, namely SMB 2.1 and SMB 3.0.
Connectivity: When talking about connectivity, both Azure Blobs and files offer REST APIs that connect worldwide. However, it is the latter that also enables the SMB 2.1 within the region where the storage is made. However, when the Azure files and disks are compared, the connectivity of the files hold a good power as it gets connected as soon as the machine starts, whereas the disks get connected after the virtual machine has started working.
Capacity: The capacity of Azure Blobs exists up to 2 PiB Account Limit and of the files, it is 5 TiB file shares.
Thus, if you are someone who is keen on “lifting and shifting” and to store development and debugging tools that need access from many virtual machines, then blobs may surely be your cup of tea. If you are someone who wants the application to be supportive to the streaming and random access scenarios and wishes to access application data from anywhere, then using files maybe apt for your storage. However, If you are keen to lift and shift applications that use native file system APIs to read and write data to persistent disks and are interested to store data that is not necessarily required to be accessed from outside the virtual machine to which the disk is attached, then Azure Disks may be your perfect choice.