Microsoft Azure File Storage Reviews

We are transforming our Oracle databases to the data lake because the data volume is increasing daily. We are moving from classic Azure to modernize our architecture in that scenario.

The product can integrate with all platforms. My team also does data visualization, and Power BI can directly connect with those nodes. We can very conveniently connect with multiple tools for our database. The benefit here is that by utilizing the same storage application, my application is linked with their application through the same server. This setup provides real analytics and data for a holistic purpose, which is advantageous.

The tool needs to add more controls and enhance Power BI. For instance, I'm just suggesting the visualization layer. Power BI can increase visualization as much as possible, and the product can add more controls to the data flows. 

I have been working with the product for seven to eight months. 

I rate the tool's stability an eight out of ten.

My company has 20-23 users. 

As of now, support seems to be understanding the situation well. If there are any questions about the intro, they're handled separately. We've hired a vendor to provide support in India, and they should be able to provide the necessary assistance. However, if the issue surpasses their capabilities, it's escalated to the US panel or the core development team, which usually takes longer.

Our vendor helps with the deployment process.

I rate the overall solution an eight out of ten. 

We primarily use the solution in the IoT environment to gather information from devices in file form using FTP protocol and SDP to move the files from the clients to the cloud. Naturally, we kept those files in the file system that we moved for various internal reasons into a database. Due to physical and preconceived infrastructure reasons, we moved the installation into the data of up to a week. This is to block storage for analytics and data warehousing.

The solution used a standard file system. It is very easy to use SSTP and some traditional code to move the data into a database because we can easily use the permissions and we don't have any integration or conversion issues.

The integration of the site storage with SQL was not completely seamless. We had to do some extra steps as there was no immediate support for file storage, only for block storage. For whatever reason, since we were working with a managed service and a secure service, most of the connections we made were not very successful. We had to do some networking. The integration has room for improvement.

In our process, we use the entire system just as an intermediate. An ideal solution is to gather the information from the endpoint and then move it into a database or sign-up. With that, we can do some analytics. In the future, it would be nice if there was a tight progression between the five storage and the analytical tools. For example, if we are working with Power BI, it would be very helpful if we could point to the signer, SQL environment, global environment, or file system environment and have them be completely synchronous.

I have been using the solution for two years.

The stability is good except for a few occasions when we had issues with the SQL.

The solution is scalable.

We have 100 people using the solution in our organization.

The technical support is good.

The initial setup is straightforward.

I give the pricing of the solution a seven out of ten.

I give the solution a seven out of ten.

Azure files offers several architectural scenarios so you can check and implement different use cases depending on your needs. In brief you can use the Azure Files with a serverless approach or to integrate it with your on premise file servers through Azure File Sync.

We have IT colleagues spread all over the world, so we are trying to define governance rules. We need to manage things at the infrastructure level, and so the Azure File could be a technology to replace or to integrate with our file servers on-premise solution.

We are testing and looking at the pros and cons, and we will decide based on features and the cost that will be present to the infrastructure manager. I think we will start to use Azure Files technology in production in the next year.

Azure Files does not require management of hardware or operating systems.

What we have found good for our company is the part related to the Azure File Sync that could be useful in a disaster recovery environment. If we have to restore all the shared data on-premise, it takes a lot of hours or days. We installed the Azure File Sync on a test on-premise server, and it was quick to synchronize back from Azure to the on-premise server. This is a really nice feature.

To get the best features on tiering, performance and security we must use W2016 and W10 in fact for example Azure File Sync does not support Data Deduplication and cloud tiering on Windows Server 2012 R2.

All data are encrypted in transit and at rest on Azure Files, Defender for Azure Storage is also available at additional cost.

Azure File offers Local and Geo-redundancy, your data can be stored in multiple Azure data centers improving availability and data proximity.

Azure backup is a fully managed service so you don't need to manage an on-premise solution, it is easy to use even though we expected better performance on the restore part, using standard storage we spend from 89 to 96 minutes to restore 341GB.

Keep attention and do not share the storage account key since it can be a security issue. With the storage account key, you can do everything you want on the storage account and on the file shares. It can be useful because this is the only way to work at home with an unmanaged PC from my company, but at the same time, if you share this key to external users, it could be a security issue.

It's a bit tricky to manage the permissions, because you have to set RBAC rights then mount the Azure File Share on your PC/server and then start to manage NTFS permissions locally.

The ability to check the open files would be a nice additional feature. On-premise you can check which files are open. On Azure, I haven't found this part.

Management and Troubleshooting often need Powershell commands.

We have been testing the solution since June 2021, but not in a real production environment. We are only testing macros, permissions, accessibility, backup and so on.

Good

I'm from Italy, but I belong to a server team hosted mainly in France and Germany. We need to manage things at the infrastructure level, and Azure File could be a technology to replace or to integrate with our on-premise solution.

The service can scale to fit almost any need, Azure Files offers four different tiers of storage allowing us to tailor our shares to the performance but obviously the cost will increase.

We have an enterprise agreement with microsoft so I tried to open a couple of requests directly at Microsoft, asking more information about the cost. Their reply was, "We don't have precise information for you, use the Azure Calculator; just start to use the service then check after some time".

Implement the service is quite easy, managing permissions can be tricky when starting from zero on this topic.

For one terabyte of data, we are spending about 150 Euro every month; but we are using the solution at a basic level with standard storage (HDDs and not SDDs).

It has been difficult to understand the real cost besides the solution, In my oppinion costs are not fully transparent.

In my company, we use Microsoft Azure File Storage for the backup of our data since we have opted for an on-premises deployment model. We also use it to keep another copy of the data.

Microsoft Azure File Storage is not that easy to use. We had a few concerns regarding the communication between Microsoft's on-premises and cloud versions, which we feel is because of the geolocation differences between our business and the data centers of Microsoft. The product should be easier to use.

Since the initial setup phase of Microsoft Azure File Storage was not easy, it should be made easier by getting Microsoft to pay closer attention to the Middle East region.

I have been using Microsoft Azure File Storage for four years. I use the solution's latest version.

Stability-wise, I rate the solution a seven out of ten since my company did face some communication issues between Microsoft's on-premises and cloud versions.

It is a scalable product since it is a cloud solution. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

The IT personnel in our company use the solution.

My company has managers, admins, engineers, and developers as technical staff for the solution.

It is regularly used in my company.

The solution's technical support is good.

The initial setup phase of Microsoft Azure File Storage was not easy.

The deployment process was completed in two weeks.

Our company uses the help of consultants during the installation. We can also call the resellers to help us with the installation.

My company has experienced a return on investment for our business use cases.

The licensing cost for Microsoft Azure File Storage comes with an agreement from Microsoft.

I would tell those planning to buy the solution to put in the effort to understand Microsoft's strategy before they go for a cloud solution or cloud storage. The product's potential users need to find the risks of going to a cloud solution and the return on their investment. They also need to compare the on-premises and the cloud solution offered by Microsoft Azure File Storage.

Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

We are using Microsoft Azure File Storage for file access.

The most valuable feature of Microsoft Azure File Storage is the cloud file storage capability.

The support could improve.

I have been using Microsoft Azure File Storage for approximately six years.

We looked into the stability before we chose this solution and it has great stability.

I rate the stability of Microsoft Azure File Storage a nine out of ten.

We have less than 500 people using the solution.

I rate the scalability of Microsoft Azure File Storage an eight out of ten.

The support needs to improve. When we contacted support we received different answers to resolute our issue which was not helpful.

I rate the support from Microsoft Azure File Storage a three out of ten.

Negative

The majority of people are primarily using the Microsoft ecosystem. If I were not part of that ecosystem today, I would undoubtedly require an alternative to Microsoft Azure File Storage. In fact, I would likely opt for either Google or AWS instead.

The initial setup of Microsoft Azure File Storage is simple. Someone with basic technical knowledge can handle the task.

We did the deployment of the solution ourselves.

The price of Microsoft Azure File Storage is expensive, we do not know exactly how the price is calculated.

I rate the price of Microsoft Azure File Storage five out of ten.

We use four people for the maintenance of the solution.

I rate Microsoft Azure File Storage an eight out of ten.

This solution is mainly used for banking processes. 

The solution is easy to use, it's very user-friendly and intuitive. 

Licensing costs are expensive and I'd like to see the price come down.

We've been using this solution for four years. 

We haven't had any issues with stability. 

The scalability is good. 

We've used the technical support and it's good. 

Positive

The deployment of this solution is not carried out by my team but I believe the implementation required five people. 

Licensing costs are quite expensive, although I believe the more users you have, the less expensive it becomes. 

This is becoming a very widely used platform throughout the world. I think the sooner people get on to it, the better it will be for their organization. I rate this solution nine out of 10. 

We use the solution for migrating local file servers and for file storage of on-premise systems.

The immutable storage features are valuable. It works very well.

It’s a challenge to find the right support person. The technical support must be improved.

I have been using the solution for three years.

I rate the tool’s stability an eight out of ten.

I rate the tool’s scalability an eight out of ten. Our customers are not very large companies. The product is suitable for small and medium-sized businesses.

If we are in the right queue, the support is very good. If we have the right support person, the support is quite good.

The initial setup is easy, straightforward, and quick.

I did the deployment myself. I have deployed the tool as a consultant for other companies.

The product must improve its price.

I am a service provider for Microsoft. Overall, I rate the tool an eight out of ten.

We use the solution in our organization for its archival functionality. We are essentially archiving data with Microsoft Azure File Storage. Even though we have the applications and the storage, we are replicating our data into different data storages.

Feature-wise, it is an easily accessible solution since Microsoft is integrating everything into its products nowadays.

The solution is expensive. Considering the enterprise licensing required for the solution, the cost of the solution is an area where the product needs improvement.

I have been working on Microsoft Azure File Storage for around five to ten years. Presently, I am working on the latest version of the solution. I am an end user of the solution. I also work as an integrator for the solution.

We don't face any stability issues with the solution in our organization. I rate the solution's stability an eight out of ten.

It is a very scalable solution. I rate the solution's scalability a nine out of ten. Around ten to fifteen of our customers are using the solution.

In my experience with the solution's technical support team, I would say it was okay since I faced no difficulties. I rate the solution's technical support team an eight out of ten.

Positive

We use Commvault and Veeam in our organization. The reason to use Microsoft Azure File Storage is that it is a cloud solution. Though the other ones are also cloud solutions, Microsoft offers better pricing compared to them.

The solution's initial setup process was straightforward.

Around two weeks were needed for the solution's deployment process. Also, the deployment process is something which one can do by themselves.

Only one technical person is required to deploy and maintain the solution.

We need a consultant with knowledge of integration and EDI-related processes to implement the solution.

I am unsure if I have seen an ROI using the solution since I don't look into the commercial part.

One needs to pay according to the storage they plan to use in the solution. The payments are to be made yearly. It is usually monthly, but we opted for yearly subscriptions in our company. In general, all cloud solutions are expensive. Ultimately the solution of the cost depends upon how one plans to use it, which includes features like data usage backup and other such data-related stuff. So the cost can differ from customer to customer.

I recommend the solution to those planning to use it, especially if they require a cheap cloud solution. We haven't seen any issues with the solution in our organization since it works fine. Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.