Top Azure File Storage Alternatives

Just the way your regular, tangible substances such as clothes, vegetables, etc. need a storage pace, digital data requires a home too. It’s essential to choose a secure storage option where your data can rest without any interference. Azure File Storage is one such fully-managed storage solution. It’s been built to support an assortment of use cases, including migration of applications to the cloud, hosting HA workload data, sharing server data across platforms, etc. It employs the industry-standard SMB (Server Message Block) 3.0 protocol to enable you to leverage cloud storage for your existing applications from anywhere in the world.

Fully-managed file shares with Azure File Storage

Azure File Storage helps in performing fully managed file shares for existing on-premise applications. With no requirement for OS deployments and hardware management for Azure Files, you can minimize the maintenance overhead. Being SMB 3.0 compliant, it employs all industry-standard encryptions as well as persistent handles so that you can perform transfers across frameworks without breaking any code or making any changes to legacy applications. So, between the on-premise and Azure cloud, the applications can share files seamlessly and concurrently with multiple machines.     

Get cross-platform availability with hybrid flexibility

When it comes to on-premise file shares, you can mount these shares on Windows, Linux, as well as macOS. Automations are quick and fast with Azure CLI and PowerShell. Administrators using Azure Explorer or the Portal can easily automate Azure Files for better performance. With geo-redundancy, it can store files across multiple Azure data centers spread across the globe. It ensures over 99.99% of data durability. Plus, with the persistent handles from SMB 3.0, it also provides high availability when you are hosting applications in Azure’s shared file storage.

A smart and secure solution for file storage

Azure File is a smart solution. To access performance locally, its File Sync agent also lets you cache the shares in Windows servers, available on-premise. So, even when high latency and low bandwidths prevail, you can access your files quickly. With SMB 3.0 and HTTPS compliance, you can be sure that your data is secured. It also offers REST API and Client Libraries for further convenience in storage. With IO-intensive and performance-sensitive workloads, you can rely on premium shares.