Microsoft Azure Block Storage Reviews

This solution is integrated to the backup console, so there's no user interaction. We're using Azure Block Storage as our second copy storage.

We're working as a distributor.

We use this solution for backup storage on our on-premise backup.

There are capacity limitations that could be expanded.

When freeing the backup capacity on our disk, we have to create another block storage and integrate with that. The limitations may be an issue with the customer.

It should be more flexible for customers. For example, if a customer needs 10TB of capacity, it should be flexible for the customer to expand to that capacity.

I have been using this solution for one year.

It's a stable solution.

There are some limitations when it comes to the capacity and scalability.

Installation is simple. You don't need an integrator or consultant for setup.

We compared this solution with AWS S3. It mostly works like object storage.

I would rate this solution 9 out of 10.

I develop the solution for customers, so the use case varies.

The ability to synchronize data in a distributed environment is very useful. It makes it easier to work with different geographic and availability zones.  

The solution could have better archival policies and localization of data.

I have been using this solution for about three or four years.

The stability and reliability of the product are very good.

Scalability is there, I never see an issue with the scalability of the solution.

We sometimes have issues during data migration or face a bug, which requires us to contact the support team. I would mark them four out of ten.

Neutral

I would say the setup is simple. 

I also work with AWS, so that was a consideration. 

Azure Block Storage has very good integration with the Microsoft suite, which helps a lot when creating a digital workspace. That's why I like this product.I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We recently moved to Block Storage for SQL on Azure. It enables our employees to work remotely. We are customers of Microsoft and I'm a technical infrastructure analyst.

This is a very robust and flexible solution.

I'd like them to improve the features of data gathering - sometimes you need to get the data from the block and it's usually very expensive.

I've been using this solution for six months. 

The solution is stable. 

This solution is very scalable. 

Microsoft provides good support. They respond quickly and their technical people are very helpful. 

The initial setup is easy. 

It's important to analyze your requirements because it can sometimes be a problem in terms of price. Pay attention to locking because sometimes the amount of data on the block can lock your business.

I rate the solution 10 out of 10. 

We have Azure Block Storage because we heavily use image and video files in our application for our data. We are able to store and download them from our web application to view images and stream/playback videos.

This is a very stable solution.

I would like for the next release to replace the CDN being used for content delivery, there is currently a rather long delay.

I have been using this solution for more than four years.

I have not had any issues regarding the stability thus far.

This is a scalable solution. We have twelve people using Azure at our company with over four thousand end users

Microsoft support is really amazing. We got feedback quickly, almost within twenty four hours.

The initial setup was easy. All I needed to do was create an account and begin configuration.

I was able to complete the setup myself and it took all but thirty minutes.

Note that if you plan to use Azure, you will need to create an account with AWS.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We use Azure Block Storage as the secure backup destination for data from on-premise sources and also from cloud services. I backup files from SQL to Azure Block Storage and restore from Azure when needed.

We can use Azure Block Storage for some of our bigger files. 

Azure Block Storage could use more capacity.

We started using Azure Block Storage in 2020.

So far, so good.

Azure Block Storage is scalable enough to meet the needs of our company of 1,000 employees.

We had a minor issue with Block Storage, but we never opened a ticket with Microsoft support.

Setting up Block Storage is simple. We handled it ourselves, and it only took around an hour. After deployment, all the maintenance is done by the provider.

I think Azure Block Storage is a reasonable price for the amount of storage we're getting. 

I rate Azure Block Storage eight out of 10. I like that I don't need much technical experience. I always recommend Azure Block Storage to other companies that already used Azure. -

We are currently using it for POC. It is not yet live. The data storage is pulling the data.

We have the latest version of this solution.

It is easy to integrate with applications.

It should be easier to deploy.

I have been using this solution for one year.

It is stable.

It is scalable. Currently, we have three or four users.

Their support is fine.

Its installation is okay. It takes around one hour.

It was done by me. Sometimes, it is also done by a third party.

I would recommend this solution. I would rate Microsoft Azure Block Storage a seven out of ten.

We are using Microsoft Azure Block Storage to accumulate and store all unstructured data, that is, different files such as Excel, Word, PowerPoint, or any other streaming or video files. Whenever there is any unstructured data, you can use the Microsoft Azure Block Storage to deal with it.

It has easy versioning. The versioning is amenable to any changes. 

It also has great security. It can only be accessed through an API, and only the requested users can access it. It is optimized for data lakes and comprehensive data management.

We need to do versioning each and every time, that is, check-in and check-out. If a person forgets to do that, then there could be an issue in the replacement of that particular object in the storage. It will be great if it can be automatically managed.

I have been using this solution for the last two to three years. 

There are absolutely no issues. They're really great at stability. 

It has great scalability.

It is quite straightforward. You can set it up even when you don't know much about it. You log into Azure.com, which is free for one year, and take a virtual machine and storage and then run your own website through Microsoft Azure Block Storage. You can store your image files, videos, and other document files from there. It is very easy. Oracle Cloud and AWS also provide the same ease of use, not only Azure.

In terms of pricing, Azure is quite cheaper than AWS. However, I have recently read that Oracle Cloud Generation 2 storage is quite cheaper than Azure. I haven't used it yet. 

We need to look at a customer's requirements, and, based on that, we can suggest the storage. You can save at least 20% with Azure as compared to AWS, which is quite costly.

I have worked on similar solutions from Oracle and Amazon. Feature-wise, they all provide the same features. However, I found Azure more convenient to work on than other solutions. It is very easy to use for data analytics purposes as well as for storing the archive data or long-term use data, that is, non-relational and unstructured data.

I would rate Microsoft Azure Block Storage a ten out of ten. It is really good.

Our primary use case is for the creation of a data lake, which was looking at unstructured predominantly in big data storage, it is looking at an economical solution. This was then used in conjunction with an SAP BW solution pulling and using SAP data hub to thencreate a single ecosystem of data.

The data lake is invaluable. We also use Microsoft SQL in terms of structuring the data and getting into a position where it could be useful to support reporting. We use Databricks for data science. We incorporated Databricks with that as well.

In terms of improvement, it could use better integration with non-propriety tools. Azure pushes you down a data factory road for integrations but data factory isn't always a scalable, viable solution, particularly when using large numbers ofconnections to IoT solutions. 

I have been using Microsoft Azure Block Storage for around a year. 

We don't have any issues with stability. 

I haven't needed to contact customer support. 

The initial setup was smooth and straightforward. The deployment took very little time. The main time frame taken was on the SAP side. We put SAP on the Azure cloud which took some time. 

I would rate it an eight out of ten. 

Think about your file structure to make sure you get it right. Management of the business is important because if the business starts pushing data into it in can turn into a data swamp.

We are creating VMs for some of our development testing, and we are using Azure Block Storage in that context. We are not using anything from Azure for production systems. We are just using it for staging and development.

Azure Block Storage is

• easy to deploy
• easy to scale up
• pay-as-you-go. 

So whenever we need something, we use it.

One of the biggest challenges on Azure infrastructure is that sometimes we don't get what we want. Either we have to wait for it or contact support because something is not working for us. Most of the time it works fine. But sometimes, when we want something critical, apart from block storage — we want to increase the capacity of the VM or we want to increase the cores of the VM — we have to wait. We get a response from Microsoft from a North American location. We want to host everything within the UAE. But we are redirected through North America or Europe. That is a challenge with Azure. It's the system availability that is the difficult point.

Also, billing is an issue. We have had a lot of problems when it comes to billing. We started working with minimal resources and we opted for pay-as-you-go mode. Microsoft needs to invest in some resources to improve the billing part. It's not about the money, but the visibility. I see a lot of invoices, but I don't see whether we have paid them or not. And if we have paid, I don't see when it was paid and through which credit card or account we paid. I see invoices, but I don't see the information related to those invoices.

I have been using Azure Block Storage for less than a year.

Availability is sometimes an issue.

Technical support, overall, is good. The response is very good. We don't have any issue with that.

We have our own data center and we use its storage system. But we want to upgrade that because it's not fulfilling our current requirements and we don't see it fulfilling our future requirements either. We have a need to upgrade our system.

Initially, we had some issues but we were not trained. We were used to the legacy environment, so we had challenges. But anyone who has technical knowledge will be able to set it up and understand it, once they start reading about how to set it up and how to use it. 

There are a few challenges, especially when we are setting up block storage or setting up the network. There are complexities of the network environment, such as creating the virtual networks, etc. It's complex.

We started looking at Dell EMC and some other solutions such as QNAP. We are evaluating them.

We have our own team to maintain it. We are still trying to add more resources to the team and trying to find someone who Azure will certify.

I would recommend Azure Block Storage so far, per my current usage, but I would also highly recommend learning how it works and how to configure it properly. Block Storage, in particular, is a bit confusing. People who do not have proper knowledge should not try R&D with it. I would highly recommend getting professional support if you really want to use it. The solution is very good, but the configuration and initial implementation should be done by professionals.

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.