Planning for Azure Files

This article provides guidance on planning your Azure Files deployment. Azure Files offers fully managed cloud file shares that are accessible via the industry-standard Server Message Block (SMB) protocol and Network File System (NFS) protocol. This makes it easy to lift and shift on-premises applications to Azure. Azure Files can be mounted concurrently by cloud or on-premises Windows, macOS, and Linux workloads.

Before deploying Azure Files, consider the following key areas:

1. Workload Requirements

• Access Protocols: Determine if your workload requires SMB, NFS, or both. Azure Files supports both protocols.
• Performance: Understand your IOPS, throughput, and latency requirements. Azure Files offers different tiers (Standard, Premium) with varying performance characteristics.
• Capacity: Estimate the total storage capacity needed, considering future growth.
• Availability and Durability: Azure Files provides high availability and durability through redundancy options (LRS, ZRS, GRS, RA-GRS).

2. Connectivity

• Public Endpoint: For simple access over the internet (SMB 3.0+ recommended).
• Private Endpoint: For secure access over a private connection from your Azure Virtual Network (VNet).
• Service Endpoint: To restrict access to your storage account to traffic originating from your VNet.
• Azure Stack Hub: For on-premises deployments.
• On-premises Access: Consider using Azure File Sync or VPN/ExpressRoute for hybrid scenarios.

3. Security

• Authentication: Choose between storage account key authentication, Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) Domain Services, or Azure AD Kerberos for domain-joined Windows clients.
• Authorization: Implement access control using share-level Access Control Lists (ACLs) for NFS or POSIX ACLs for SMB with Azure AD DS/Kerberos.
• Network Security: Utilize firewall rules, VNet integration, and private endpoints to secure access.
• Encryption: Data is encrypted at rest and in transit by default.

4. Data Management and Governance

• Redundancy: Select the appropriate data redundancy option based on your durability and availability needs.
• Snapshots: Plan for using snapshots to create point-in-time backups of your shares.
• Lifecycle Management: Consider policies for archiving or deleting old data.
• Monitoring: Set up alerts and monitor performance and usage metrics.

5. Cost Management

Azure Files pricing is based on:

• Tiers: Standard (transaction optimized), Premium (high performance).
• Capacity: The amount of data stored.
• Transactions: The number of read/write operations.
• Data Redundancy: LRS, ZRS, GRS, RA-GRS.

Use the Azure Pricing Calculator to estimate costs for your planned deployment.

Standard Tier

The Standard tier is suitable for general-purpose file sharing and workloads that don't require extremely high performance. It uses HDD-based storage and offers cost-effective capacity. Transaction costs are a significant factor for high-transaction workloads.

Premium Tier

The Premium tier is built on SSDs and offers higher IOPS, lower latency, and higher throughput. It's ideal for I/O-intensive workloads like application backends, web hosting, and development/testing environments. Provisioned capacity and performance are key pricing components.

Lift and Shift

Azure Files is an excellent choice for migrating on-premises file servers to the cloud. You can mount Azure file shares directly from your applications running in Azure VMs or containers.

Hybrid Scenarios with Azure File Sync

Azure File Sync enables you to centralize your organization's file shares in Azure Files while keeping the flexibility, performance, and compatibility of an on-premises file server. It provides cloud tiering, multi-site sync, and disaster recovery capabilities.

Application Backends

Azure Files can serve as a shared configuration store, application settings repository, or log storage for distributed applications running on Azure.