Microsoft Azure Block Storage Reviews

We have a few clients that use the solution. 

The use cases have been huge. One of the applications we are developing is an internal tax system. We tend to get a lot of client files through different channels and store them in the Block Storage. It's standing on a huge system. It's a multi-cluster, multi-AG kind of informer.

The features are pretty good. Our company mostly uses Java and Microsoft technology. We get good metadata and can save different metadata within the solution.  

It can scale. It's at 99.99%. We can always use a different life cycle on objects so that means we don't want to store the object. On one side probably we can do cold storage and kind of thing. 

Basically, there are a lot of features that are provided and we have a lot of options.

The solution is stable. 

We found the initial setup to be straightforward. 

The solution could use a couple of security features. They still have a lot of other features and everything is coming along quite nicely now, however, I would expect more features in the near future. We'd like more policies and authentication.

We've used the solution for about five years or so.

The solution definitely offers durability, and, stability-wise, we have no complaints. AWe tend to make a backup since it is working on the cluster side, so we do a backup every day. We are also able to access it at a global level.

Speed-wise, I don't see any latency issues.

The solution can scale quite well.

We have 100 clients using the solution. We have a big team in general. 

We have a relationship with and are directly partnered with Microsoft. That means we have our own technical support directly from Microsoft. They are our dedicated architects. We have a data communication channel open, so we can talk to them anytime about anything. We're quite happy with the arrangement.

We have a lot of internal products. The development team has been using Azure Storage and Block Storage and Databricks and other products from Azure.

The initial setup is pretty simple. It's not overly difficult or too complex. 

The solution is pay-as-you-go. We don't have any subscriptions; it is more like an on-demand arrangement.

Our company has ties with Microsoft. We kind of partner with Microsoft so we always attempt to propose Azure Solutions, especially in the cloud.

I would recommend the solution to others.

I'd rate it nine out of ten.

We use Azure Block Storage in two different use cases. In one case, we use it as a staging layer where the files are dumped. Then, within the release, we create and curate layers in different containers, where one container has the raw data and another standard container has the transformation-level data. The next layer is the curated layer, which we use in the views to expose the data to downstream systems like PowerBI or Tableau.

RBAC, access control, soft delete, hard delete, and cool and hot storage tiers are some of the features I have found valuable in Azure Block storage. Basically, if the file is greater than six months, it will get deleted automatically, regardless of whether it's present or not. These features have indirectly helped us to save on storage costs.

The feature that requires improvement is the hierarchical naming step. Enabling this step could provide access to certain features that are currently missing.

Another area for improvement in Microsoft Azure Block Storage is the cache feature. So whenever we upload a file to block storage and then download it to check whether it was uploaded successfully or not, it downloads the older file due to caching. But when we directly download the file without clicking on the preview options, it shows the correct file. The cache issue needs to be addressed to ensure that the correct file is downloaded, especially when it's done manually into the local storage. Because I have checked in other services as well, and the issue only arises when we download it manually into the local storage.

I've been working with Microsoft Azure Block Storage for three years now.

I would rate the stability a nine out of ten because downtime is very rare, and the backup and redundancy features are strong. So its stability is very fine.

I would rate the scalability a nine out of ten. We have 150+ users because we have RBAC, and I can only see my teammates. But I can see 50+ and could be more.

It's not just one team, but multiple teams across five to six blocks who use it according to their process.

It was mostly handled by our company's Microsoft gold partner, who received seamless support from Microsoft whenever we needed help with any settings that our team couldn't figure out. I'm not sure about other organizations, but since we were a gold partner, support was always available to us.

I found the configuration of Amazon complex compared to Azure, and the cost of Amazon is higher. The documentation is slightly better in Azure. 

The initial setup is easy. There won’t be any hiccups. Even a beginner who is interested in learning the cloud will have any issues setting it up.

I would say the price is low. When I compare it to its competitors like Ebik, Azure's price is lower.

I would give it an eight out of ten.

Overall, I would rate it a nine out of ten.

We use the solution mostly for our video files. We also use ADLS for our JSON content. Now, we are moving more to Microsoft Fabric to keep the JSON content. We have also used ADLS as a network file system for our VMs. It was good.

The solution has supported us very much with our data-intensive applications. We have an education platform. It also has Power BI reports. Before, we used to connect directly to our databases. Now, we have generated the JSON parts and stored them in the tool directly. Power BI and my applications use the pre-generated JSON.

The solution picks up pre-processed data very fast. That is why we moved from Azure’s database. The product helps us pick up and start using the data directly. The best thing about the solution is the impact on the performance of my systems. The tool is pretty easy to use.

The tool could be cheaper.

I have been using the solution for 3 to 4 years.

The tool is stable. I rate the stability a ten out of ten.

The basic connectivity gives us over two lakh concurrent requests for the Blob. It is good enough.

The initial setup is straightforward. The deployment takes one to two hours. We use our applications to structure the folder and put the files in the product. We do not need to create the storage. We just need to design the folder structure for our ADLS. It is pretty simple.

We can deploy the product in-house.

The return on investment is really good. It has helped us with many projects in various ways.

It is a pay-per-use model. There are no additional costs associated with the product.

We use the solution as a plain storage tool. Many of the features in the product are now available in Microsoft Fabric.

We never needed to contact support. Azure is the best and easiest tool for Blob storage, queue-based mechanisms, and file shares. The tool integrates very smoothly with other Azure solutions. We also use Azure Batch. It is easy to mount file storage. Overall, I rate the product a ten out of ten.

Most of the time, we store logs in the Block Storage. Mostly we use it to store the plant logs. 

The storage is very good.

It offers good pricing on that we pay for what we use and nothing more. 

The setup is straightforward. 

It's scalable. 

The solution should provide more training so that we can learn about and take advantage of more features. As it is, right now, we have to pay for training.

It could be easier to use. 

The product is not as stable as we would like it to be. 

I've been using the solution for the last six months. 

Sometimes services from Azure go down. Azure needs to improve their services to ensure there is no downtime. It's not as stable as we would like it to be 

We have a dedicated team of ten to 15 people managing the solution. 

We do have plans to increase usage at this point. 

It is a scalable product.

We have a partner who has helped us with technical problems. We have very limited hours with Microsoft. We can use only use them in the terms of absolutely critical events. Mostly, we are connecting with partners who can help us if we are stuck.

I'm also familiar with AWS S3. 

We have not really used any other solutions in the past. 

The implementation process is very simple and straightforward. I do not find it to be complex. There might be a few things here or there during setup that may be a little complex. However, it is not hard to get up and running. 

Initially, it took us three or four days to begin deployment as we had to watch some videos and go through the documentation. 

To deploy the solution, we had to first log in the Azure, then we had to create an Azure account. Once we created the account, we had to start creating storage and setting up the configuration of the storage logs. It takes time during the initial phase.

While we do not need any technical staff at this time, in the coming months, we are planning to enhance things and add in new requirements. We'll be increasing our infra and our storage, and that may require two or three more people to handle that process. 

We handled the setup process in-house. We did not use consultants. 

We pay only for how much we have used. In contrast, in the case of S3 in AWS, we paid the whole amount, even if we didn't use it all. In this case, we can pay only for the utilization of the Block Storage.

We have three licenses at this time and pay an annual subscription. 

It's not overly expensive. The pricing is somewhere in the middle if you compare it to what is on the market. 

We are using the latest version of the solution - whatever Microsoft provides.

Once Microsoft improves services a bit - including improving stability - I would recommend them. 

I'd rate the product five out of ten at this time. 

We have embarked on the journey of the global data list. All the data from the SAP systems, all the data from external vendors, and all the data from our enterprise data warehouse are staged onto the Azure Block Storage. It forms the basis of the Lakehouse architecture. That's the staging layer for us.

It has helped to centralize the data. People see it as the central source of truth. Everybody sees the same set of data across data analysts, business analysts, data scientists, and all the visualization people. It provides a centralized view of the same data.

The product offers hierarchical storage and we like the main space storage with business.

It's easy to set up.

We find the product to be stable. 

It is very scalable. 

The solution needs a direct connection to visualization. Power BI connectivity on this platform is not that great. We need a direct connection to any of the visualization tools. There should be more BI integrations.

Block Storage is something which I use on a day-to-day basis. I've used the solution for six years at least.

It's pretty stable. It has cloning and therefore has data redundancy. The disaster recovery is pretty easy with this solution.

The solution can scale well.

The solution is used across the organization in BI and data visualization leads. There are more than 300 people using it.

The use is increasing month to month with more and more data being placed into it. It's an ongoing process.

Technical support is very good. 

This was the default product we went with thanks to our partnership with Microsoft.

The initial setup was straightforward, not that complex. 

Setting up was probably a month's time, not more.

The DevOps engineers would be required for the deployment. In fact, data engineers can do it if there's no proper CIC mechanism, however, any DevOps expert can do it.

We handled the deployment in-house. 

I'm from the technology side, so I have not done that ROI comparison. It is not visible to me directly. However, I have heard that there was a bottom-line increase. 

The storage part costs us $223. That's on a monthly basis for 20TB of data storage. There are no additional costs.

We did not look into other options. 

I am a customer of Microsoft products.

We are dealing with the Azure Block ADLS Gen 2.

People should use the mechanism to save more costs. We have a hot tier and a cold tier, wherein, say you want to save more on your cost, the frequently accessed data should be in the hot, and data that is not accessed frequently should be moved to the cold tier. It helps in reducing costs by almost 50%. The tiering mechanism should be used and new users should know it is possible to arrange their data that way. 

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

I think Azure has three versions. They have Block Blob Storage, then they also have the Gen1 and the Gen2 versions. Gen2 was kind of under review until just recently in 2020, but I think they have officially launched Gen2 now. Block Storage is an Azure product, but I am not sure if it has a version. I just know it as Azure Block Blob Storage.  

Our use case for Block Storage came about when we were building a database for one of our customers on public storage. The customer kept their data on-premises and on their own servers. We would get that data from them and put it into the Block Storage. So Block was being used as a file depository.  

I think there are several valuable features in the product. The security technically is good, but they require a lot of security rules to be set up. Even so, it was kind of easy to configure. So the security is good.  

I think the ease-of-use is also good because we can even upload files up from one machine onto other blob storage, another nice feature that is also provided. Apart from that, Azure also provides Azure Storage Explorer, which can be used to access Blob data once you map it onto a local machine.  

I think also its scalability is a good feature. You can put terabytes of data into Blob Storage. So that is also one of the beneficial features of Blob.  

Azure had the Blob version prior to Block. Azure also realized that Blob Storage did not really have any main space. So, that was a limitation of the Azure Blob product. But that is also the reason why they decided to develop the Gen2 version, which puts back all the right structure for the storage and capacity.  

So, it is good to explore Gen2 as another solution. I think most of the users would eventually move from Blob Storage to Gen2 only because of the space limitations of Blob.  

You also do not see the kind of folder search capability in Blob that you might expect. Like when you are in windows, you can just go to a particular folder and you can browse within that folder and you can go into subfolders and search there as well. That feature is kind of missing in the Blob product.  

So the inability to easily search subfolders and also the space limitation of Blob are really the biggest limitations of the product.  

What I would like to see in the next release — and I am not really sure if it is possible in cloud solutions — but it would be nice to provide a feature for being able to distribute large files.  

I was using Azure Block Storage for almost all of 2019.  

I think it a stable product.  

It is scalable.  

I think our team that worked on the Blob project was about ten members. That company was would qualify as a large company itself. This was a new solution that we were going to build for the company. I would say the size of their team was smaller than ours, but in terms of the team size and what they needed for maintenance, I think Azure Block was an adequate product to use.  

We had one admin on the team which is kind of required to set it up because of the security aspect. But I think Azure Block can be set up by just the developer alone. The main users of Azure Blob are always mostly developers and testers.  

I have had only one experience with Azure technical support and that was not for Blob. It was something else. But I am still really in touch with Azure support. I had put a call over there pending for a priority-one ticket. They have continued calling me to see if things are going okay and they are very friendly. So I would say I could definitely rate their technical support as nine-out-of-ten.  

When we approached the project for the client who we first deployed Block Storage for, this was a new platform for this customer. We looked at new opportunities. Prior to this, I used Hadoop. I was not the biggest consumer of the product but gained enough experience while using Hadoop as a file storage solution to see enough to know that setting it up takes a while. It was not very user-friendly. Azure is not even comparable because it is very user-friendly.  

Azure Blob Storage is very straightforward to setup. It is just about setting up a storage account, putting in a container, and that is all. It is pretty easy. It really takes just a few minutes.  

I have been looking into data warehousing technology for quite some time. I have experience on Teradata and I have experience on Azure. I have used Azure Data Factory and I have used Azure Databricks. I have been happy with the Azure products so this has played into my decisions.  

The advice I would give people about Block Storage is that I might recommend the product based upon the use cases and storage needs. Otherwise, if they are looking for something more robust, I would recommend using the Gen2 version, which is the biggest storage system of the Azure options.  

On a scale from one to ten where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate Microsoft Azure Block Storage as at least seven-out-of-ten. This is a seven primarily because of this Gen2 release. When it comes down to it, Gen2 is a more advanced product and other than when it comes to the price most of the users will not see Block Storage as a better solution.  

I use Microsoft Azure Block Storage, Microsoft Azure Cloud, and Microsoft Azure Communication Services in my company to send emails. My company uses Azure Database for PostgreSQL. I use the three main cloud products in my company right now.

Microsoft Azure Block Storage is useful for storing files. If your company has an application that requires you to store files, then Microsoft Azure Block Storage is a very easy tool that allows users to store and handle files while allowing for file versioning.

Microsoft Azure Block Storage is an easy-to-use tool as it has a lot of APIs and libraries, making it a very easy product to get started with for a user. I think it has good APIs and libraries.

The solution's downside is related to its documentation, which I believe can be difficult to navigate because it is hidden between or within other pages of the product's manual. There are not a lot of core resources around to dig deep into when it comes to Microsoft Azure Block Storage. A user must do a lot of research around the product, which is a slow process.

In Microsoft Azure Block Storage, navigation through its documentation can be made easier. The documentation should also contain more examples to help users.

With Microsoft Azure Block Storage, sometimes in our company, we have noticed some errors in our error logging and management platform without providing much context as to why the error occurred. I think maybe more descriptive error messages will be helpful.

I have been using Microsoft Azure Block Storage for eight months.

It is a pretty stable solution.

Microsoft Azure Block Storage is a very scalable tool. My company has not had scalability issues with the product. The solution can handle many file uploads quickly and straightforwardly. With Microsoft Azure Block Storage, you can access your files on Microsoft Edge, so it's a good tool that offers scalability.

Though my organization hasn't launched Microsoft Azure Block Storage for use in our company, we plan to have around 1,000 users use it daily.

I have experience with AWS Cloud9. Based on the requirements for the current project in our company, we chose Microsoft Azure Block Storage.

The product's initial setup phase was straightforward, and if you need extra security, you have to do more probing. I believe the setup phase to start the product is pretty straightforward.

The product's setup phase with the whole of Azure and the documentation part took a few hours.

Microsoft Azure Block Storage's deployment process is not directly tied to Microsoft Cloud Storage, as it allows for the issue of APIs. Unless you are talking about deploying our company's applications, which would lead to a different conversation at this point, I can say that Microsoft Azure Block Storage's deployment process is a simple plug-and-play, after which you have access to the product.

Microsoft Azure Block Storage is a service provided by Microsoft, so it is not something that you deploy. If you already have the whole Azure infrastructure in place, then all you have to do is deal with the provisioning of an account and take care of the usage part of the solution to let Azure know if you want the services to be billed or not before you get it up and running. Azure manages the infrastructure where its products are used, so it's not deployed on an on-premises model or anything like that, as it is considered to be a managed service.

For the deployment and maintenance phases of Microsoft Azure Block Storage, you need a developer to write the codes to do whatever function you want. Then, you would need a DevOps person to ensure that the infrastructure provisioning is correct.

My company did not seek any help from the consultation to take care of the implementation process of the product since we only had to follow the instructions provided in the documentation to deal with the setup phase.

My company did not have to pay any licensing charges while using Microsoft Azure Block Storage.

Microsoft Azure Block Storage is a pretty cheap and affordable product, so we have not seen any budget issues related to the solution in our company. In our company, we knew our requirements in terms of the amount of files we wanted to be handled by the product.

I recommend the product to those who plan to use it.

The setup can be a bit tedious, especially if you try to do it by navigating through its documentation.

I rate the overall product an eight out of ten.

We are using Microsoft Azure Block Storage primarily for transferring data through the FTP. The system stores data that is sent to it and we create information reports going out. Additionally, we store data from logic applications and message logs in a storage channel.

We have different deployments of the solution, such as hybrid, cloud, and on-premise.

One of our clients is utilizing an on-premise warehouse management system with two interconnected data centers for data transfer, ensuring disaster recovery. Their system utilizes JDA web query due to its seamless integration with their warehouse machines. To enhance their operations, they have hired Azure-implemented API-driven solutions using logic apps and other tools. 

We are using Power BI and data gateway to extract data from Oracle tables and databases. While we try to utilize logistic data to answer queries, we have a series of APIs available, which they often call upon using established logic apps.

The solution can be used for many purposes it is flexible.

The most helpful features of Microsoft Azure Block Storage are the many use cases. Additionally, it can be locked down well and has two-factor authentication.

The solution has been improving over the time I have used it with new features, such as private links and managing identities.

Microsoft Azure Block Storage could improve the SFTP. The SFTP can be used for exchanging data between two parties and it works but Microsoft is new to this market and they could be a lot better in this area with its features.

The querying could be improved in the storage system. SQL is a fundamental technology but there are only partition rules and row IDs, and it is slow to query the data.

The day and time stamps are not indexed in any way which makes it very slow. Additionally, if you wanted to remove all the data over a month, there is no option to do so. There are areas that the solution can improve on in the future.

I have been using Microsoft Azure Block Storage for approximately four years.

The stability of Microsoft Azure Block Storage is good, I have not had an issue.

The solution is highly scalable and there are not a lot of limits. However, you do have to pay money for scalability.

We've never had to seek support for setup for Microsoft Azure Block Storage as it has always been relatively simple. With numerous YouTube videos and Microsoft Learn providing active examples, we were able to set everything up with ease. In most cases, the instructions were straightforward, and we only needed to follow them.

Having used Amazon S3 before, Microsoft Azure Block Storage is superior because it offers much more than just block storage. It has various other functionalities, allowing users to store files, tables, media, and more. It's a versatile storage solution that we're using for content delivery networks, coupled with the Microsoft content delivery network. Overall, it's an excellent storage management solution.

The solution is easy to set up.

The price of scaling the solution is not expensive.

I rate Microsoft Azure Block Storage a nine out of ten.