Azure Files and Azure File Sync

In Chapter 9, we started talking about Azure Storage by exploring Blob Storage as a generic storage solution for files. We also mentioned that Azure Storage offers additional capabilities by exposing various endpoints not only for blob management but tables, queues, and file shares as well. In this chapter, we’re going to discover various features of File Service, which can easily be used as a replacement for common on-premises setups.

Upon completing this chapter, you’ll be able to successfully configure and manage File Service. You’ll also be able to automatically synchronize data stored within that service. In this chapter, we’re going to cover the following main topics:

• Managing Azure Files (File Service)
• File share snapshots
• Azure File Sync

Technical requirements

For the exercises in this chapter, you’ll need the following:

• The Azure CLI (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cli/azure/install-azure-cli)
• A command line of any kind (either available in your operating system or your favorite one)

The Code in Action video for this book can be viewed at: https://packt.link/GTX9F

Managing Azure Files (File Service)

Azure Files (often called File Service or File Storage) is a managed solution that’s part of Azure Storage. While Blob Storage, as described in Chapter 9, enables us to store various files, configure their life cycles, and replicate them accordingly, Azure Files is meant as an enterprise-grade file share solution that can be integrated with the end user machine as a replacement for on-premises shares. Such an approach allows you to simplify infrastructure setup and lower the cost of operations as you no longer need to manage infrastructure yourself.

Let’s start our journey with Azure Files by describing possible access protocols.

Available access protocols

As Azure Files is a cloud-based file share, to be useful as a replacement for on-premises components, it needs to support a similar set of common protocols that are used in file-sharing scenarios. For now, this service supports the following access methods:

• Server...

Working with file share snapshots

File shares are mostly part of your infrastructure, which is one of the critical components for business continuity. They’re often involved in the day-to-day work of many people working in a company so that they can share data, collaborate, and send files. In some scenarios, file shares may be also part of the application’s infrastructure, and issues when connecting with them may affect your end users as well. In this section, we’ll cover the topic of snapshots, which can be configured for File Service.

A snapshot, in the context of a file share, is described as a state that was saved at a certain point in time. This means that different snapshots may contain different files (or files with different content). Snapshots for File Service are very similar to the backups you can perform for a database. They need to be configured, stored, and tested in a way that ensures their reliability and availability. One thing worth mentioning...

Working with Azure File Sync

Azure Files service allows you to have a file share, which simplifies infrastructure and configuration management. However, as it’s a cloud-based solution, it also has its cons. It turns out that in bigger organizations, you may be affected by performance issues or need a longer time to synchronize data stored on your file shares. This comes from the fact that the ideal setup for file shares based on Azure Files is a one-to-one mapping between a share and storage account. Of course, in most scenarios, you’re not looking to have an individual share for each employee – you’re seeking a solution for sharing files with as many people as possible using a single share.

To overcome the challenge of when you have too many files or the access time is too long, Azure offers a feature called Azure File Sync, which can be used on machines running Windows Server. When Azure File Sync is enabled, your machine works as a cache for File Service...

Summary

In this chapter, you learned about Azure Files as the second service available in Azure Storage that we planned to cover in this book. We talked about concepts such as sharing files using this service and discussed the differences between direct mounts and advanced infrastructure while leveraging Azure File Sync for caching and improving the performance of the whole setup. We also tried to improve the reliability and security of the data that’s stored in deployed file shares using snapshots and the soft delete feature.

Everything you learned in this chapter will help you build file shares in the cloud that can be utilized in scenarios where you want to transform your on-premises infrastructure into modern cloud-based components. This is a common task for Azure administrators that is performed in many companies nowadays.

The next chapter will mark the end of Part 4 of this book, Azure Storage for Administrators. We’ll cover more details related to security...