Businesses of all sizes are facing the challenge of increasing data volumes and the critical need for efficient, scalable, and cost-effective file storage solutions. At Azure Storage, we deeply understand these demands. That’s why we continue to innovate within Azure Files, our fully managed file share service in the cloud. Azure Files manages hundreds of millions of file shares with billions of files, enabling large-scale production workloads including business critical application data, general purpose and department shares, and hybrid datasets with seamless cloud tiering. We’re excited to share a wave of exciting new enhancements to Azure Files and Azure File Sync, designed to simplify how you manage and access your file data. These new updates represent improvements in performance, cost optimization, security, management simplicity, and intelligent assistance, all tailored to benefit your business. Let’s dive into some of the key innovations.
Lower total cost (TCO) and improve scale with provisioned v2 for Azure Files
Managing cloud storage costs can be a complex puzzle for many organizations. The traditional pay-as-you-go model for hard disk drive (HDD) (standard) Azure Files, while conceptually simple, often presents challenges in accurately predicting and budgeting for file storage expenses. You pay for storage consumed and transactions incurred, but forecasting transaction volume, especially for dynamic workloads, can feel unpredictable. To enable you to optimize your cloud spend, we recently announced provisioned v2 billing model for HDD (standard) Azure Files. This new model shifts from a usage-based pricing structure to a provisioned model, giving you control and predictability over your file storage costs. With Provisioned v2, you pay for the storage capacity, input/output operations per second (IOPS), and throughput provisioned, reserving resources tailored to your workload’s specific needs. This allows you to confidently migrate your general-purpose workloads to Azure Files, knowing you’ll get the optimal balance of performance and price.
In addition to the cost advantages of the HDD provisioned v2 model, we’ve significantly increased the performance limits compared to the previous HDD pay-as-you-go approach. The maximum share size has been expanded to 256 TiB, doubling the previous 100 TiB limit, as well as 50,000 IOPS, and 5 GiB/sec of throughput. These enhanced limits are crucial as your data footprint grows. With Provisioned v2, your Azure file share can dynamically scale your file share performance up or down on demand, without any downtime. You can avoid complex and often cumbersome workarounds like sharding, allowing you to maintain a logical and intuitive file share structure that aligns with your organizational needs.
With per-share granular monitoring on provisioned v2 you can monitor storage, IOPS, and throughput usage directly at the file share level, enabling precise resource optimization. New metrics like Transactions by Max IOPS, Bandwidth by Max MiB/sec, File Share Provisioned IOPS, File Share Provisioned Bandwidth MiB/s, and Burst Credits for IOPS provide detailed insights of your resource utilization for better control on provisioning decisions.
Supercharge workload performance with metadata caching
Many organizations rely on Azure Files SSD (premium) for demanding workloads such as AI/ML on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), web applications like Moodle, CI/CD pipelines and virtual desktops. A common challenge in these environments is performance bottlenecks stemming from frequent file system metadata operations. Tasks like directory listing and file attribute retrieval, while essential, can significantly impact application responsiveness and overall efficiency, if the metadata operations are not performant.
To address this critical performance need, we introduced metadata caching for Azure Files SSD (premium). This feature provides an efficient caching mechanism designed to directly tackle this issue by reducing latency and improving consistency for metadata operations. Organizations can expect up to a 55% reduction in metadata latency and enable up to three times greater metadata IOPS and throughput.
Companies like Suncor Energy are already noticing the difference that Metadata Caching makes in their Geospatial Information System (GIS) operations.
Enabling Metadata Cache in Azure Files SSD (premium) significantly improved geospatial (GIS) workload performance, reducing execution time by 43.18%. This enhancement boosts throughput and IOPS, increasing the value of Azure Files.
—Colin Stuckless, Suncor Energy Inc.
Optimize hybrid cloud environments with Azure File Sync
Cloud migrations and large-scale data updates often require moving or synchronizing vast amounts of data efficiently. We’ve made significant improvements in boosting Azure File Sync’s performance, achieving sync speeds of up to 200 items per second. This represents a 10 times improvement over the past two years, bolstering Azure File Sync effectiveness in facilitating seamless migrations and efficient data management, particularly in scenarios such as branch office file consolidation and hybrid application hosting. This performance enhancement is especially beneficial for scenarios involving large data transfers or bulk updates, such as migrating from on-premises file servers or when making extensive changes to file permissions. It empowers you to transition to Azure File Sync faster, manage larger datasets more effectively, and accelerate your cloud modernization journey.
Additionally, Azure File Sync now supports Windows Server 2025, ensuring compatibility with Microsoft’s latest server platform. The Azure File Sync extension for Windows Admin Center now supports a broad range of server operating systems, from Windows Server 2025 down to Windows Server 2016, providing flexibility for organizations regardless of their current server environment. The integration with Windows Admin Center (WAC) provides a centralized management console, offering a unified interface for managing configurations across all your File Sync servers. This simplifies management, reduces complexity, and saves valuable administrative time. With this powerful combination, you can leverage Windows Server as a high-speed cache for your Azure file share and optionally implement cloud tiering for optimal data management and cost efficiency.
What’s more? With Copilot in Azure for Azure File Sync, you now have an AI-powered assistant readily available to analyze your environment and identify potential root causes of common issues, such as network connectivity problems, incorrect permissions, or missing file shares. Copilot provides actionable recommendations to resolve issues with step-by-step assistance. It can even help you optimize storage costs by automating lifecycle management rule creation, enabling you to tier or delete data based on access patterns.
Enhance workload security and data protection with Azure Files
Azure File Sync now supports Managed Identities (MI), a significant enhancement to authentication and security. This feature allows your Azure File Sync resources to authenticate and communicate with Azure File shares using an Entra ID based authentication, eliminating the need for shared keys and enhancing your security posture. Adopting Managed Identities, you can strengthen the security of your Azure File Sync deployment, simplify credential management, and align with best practices for cloud security.
Additionally, robust data protection for your Azure Files HDD tier (Standard) is now easier with vaulted backup. Addressing the critical needs for security and compliance, this capability provides a defense against modern threats like ransomware by securely isolating backups within a dedicated Recovery Services vault. Snapshots ensure quick recovery, while vaulted backups act as a secure offsite copy, protecting against various data loss scenarios, including ransomware and accidental deletion. Backup data can be retained for up to 99 years in cost-effective, highly secure, and immutable storage. Even if your file share is permanently deleted, recovery is possible, with cross-region restore options.
Migrate with ease to Azure Files using integrated migration solutions
If you’re looking for a seamless migration of your existing Windows Server, Linux, or Network Attached Storage (NAS) environments, Azure offers straightforward tools to help you get started. Azure File Sync and Azure Mover simplify the migration process from on-premises Windows Server environments, learn more here. Additionally, as part of the Azure Storage migration program, you can now utilize industry-leading file migration solutions such as Komprise, Data Dynamics, and Atempo for the discovery, assessment, and migration of data from NAS environments to Azure at no additional cost.
Get ready to transform your File Storage
With lower TCO for business-critical workloads, enhanced scale and data protection, improved security posture with Managed Identities, comprehensive migration utilities, integration with Copilot in Azure, Azure Files is designed to empower your business. As always, there is more to come. Our roadmap for the year ahead will focus on continued enhancements in security, performance and simplified management enabling customers to do more with Azure Files. Visit Azure Files and Azure File Sync documentation to learn about our latest innovations and discover how they can solve your specific business challenges. Please reach out to the team at AzureFiles@microsoft.com for any questions.
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