Azure Files
Choosing the datastore option
Azure NetApp Files offers concurrent support and interoperability between both SMB-based and NFS-based clients. Blob storage does not offer SMB support. No interoperability between protocols is offered by Azure Files. Table storage does not provide file storage or meet the interoperability requirements.
| Comparison | Azure Blob Storage | Azure Files | Azure NetApp Files |
|---|---|---|---|
| Description | Azure Blob Storage is best suited for large scale read-heavy sequential access workloads where data is ingested once and modified later. Blob Storage offers the lowest total cost of ownership, if there's little or no maintenance. |
Azure Files is a highly available service best suited for random access workloads. For NFS shares, Azure Files provides full POSIX file system support and can easily be used from container platforms like Azure Container Instance (ACI) and Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). |
Azure NetApp Files is a fully managed file service in the cloud, powered by NetApp, with advanced management capabilities. Azure NetApp Files is suited for workloads that require random access and provides broad protocol support and data protection capabilities. |
| Use cases | Large scale analytical data, Throughput sensitive high-performance computing, Backup and archive, Autonomous driving, Media rendering, or Genomic sequencing | Shared files, Databases, Home directories, Traditional applications, ERP, CMS, NAS migrations that don't require advanced management, Custom applications that require scale-out file storage | On-premises enterprise NAS migration that requires rich management capabilities, Latency sensitive workloads like SAP HANA, Latency-sensitive or IOPS intensive high performance compute, Workloads that require simultaneous multi-protocol access |
| Available protocols | - NFS 3.0 - REST - Data Lake Storage Gen2 |
- SMB - NFS 4.1 - REST |
- NFS 3.0 and 4.1 - SMB |
| Performance (per volume) | Up to 20,000 IOPS. Up to 15 GiB/s throughput. | Up to 100,000 IOPS. Up to 10 GiB/s throughput | Up to 460,000 IOPS. Up to 4.5 GiB/s throughput for regular volumes. Up to 10 GiB/s throughput for large volumes. |
Azure Files protocols
| Feature | SMB | NFS |
|---|---|---|
| Supported protocol versions | SMB 3.1.1, SMB 3.0, SMB 2.1 | NFS 4.1 |
| Recommended OS | - Windows 11, version 21H2+ - Windows 10, version 21H1+ - Windows Server 2019+ - Linux kernel version 5.3+ |
Linux kernel version 4.3+ |
| Available tiers | Premium, transaction optimized, hot, and cool | Premium |
| Redundancy | LRS, ZRS, GRS, GZRS | LRS, ZRS |
| File system semantics | Win32 | POSIX |