Microsoft Azure Block Storage Reviews

We primarily use the solution for storage. 

The storage is great. It's easy to upload files. 

The stability seems to be very reliable.

It's a very scalable solution. 

I like the storage explorer feature. 

I cannot recall coming across any missing features. 

I have experience in resolving various issues, however, troubleshooting can be sometimes very difficult as items are not very well documented. If the documentation could be improved then it would be very good. Right now, if you face a question, you have to guess how it works or you have to test your hypothesis. This would be great for newer, more basic users. 

I have explored the solution several times in the past and have used it maybe for almost a year. I work with it almost on a daily basis.

I have never had any issues with eh stability. I've never dealt with bugs or glitches and it doesn't crash or freeze. It's stable and reliable. 

The solution scales well. If a company wants to expand it, it can do so. It's not a problem. 

I've never directly dealt with technical support. I can't comment on how helpful they would be if issues came up. 

I have experience with Databricks and I'd not say that there isn't much of a difference. I tend to prefer Azure as everything is under one umbrella. 

The solution was not deployed by me directly. 

I'm just an end-user. I don't have any special arrangements with the company. 

I would rate the solution a ten out of ten. I haven't had any issues with it at all. 

We use it as a storage backend for our analytical use cases and we do modeling in the Azure Databricks environment. We store huge chunks of data in terms of terabytes. We use this data to gain insights into our modeling platform. We find it cheaper than storing it on-premise. And it does not require infrastructure maintenance.

It has improved my organization by reducing costs by 90%. There's still no infrastructure engineering involved for the maintenance and it's easy to use.

The tier feature in V2 is the most valuable feature of this solution. It enables you to move your storage from hot tier to cold tier into archive tier.

That is one of the features I liked it better than a version V1 because V1did not have this feature.version. Because of it, we can save costs on storage.

There is a folder inside the block storage. I am not able to delete the folder completely from the portal. I need to go delete the file inside and then I will be able to delete the folders.

We don't delete the other tools from the folder directly. There's no folder deletion option in Azure Block Storage. It would be nice if they could update this. 

I have been using Azure Block Storage for four years.

We haven't had any problems with stability. 

It's a pretty simple solution and it scales up automatically when the data size goes up. It scales up and the costs increase accordingly.

The initial setup was straightforward. We did the deployment ourselves. They have good online documentation.  Producing the storage account took about 10 minutes max. The overall configuration took maybe 10 minutes. To make it work properly took around one hour.

It only took one person to deploy it.

Most of the users use it as the default storage. We have close to 1,000 users using this solution.  

It requires one person per team to maintain it. so maybe one person per team, it would be a maximum of a hundred people. 

It's used across the organization by the technology team and the data science team. We're not looking to expand the usage because I feel that at least this part of the solution has reached the desired audience.

Our ROI is that it has reduced our costs by 90%.

The amount for storage we used to pay $1,000 per month, now we only pay around $10.

For the first 50DB, they cost around $50. 

It's an open solution for everybody. Anybody can go to the Microsoft website and they can get the pricing for it. But the first 50GB of data is a default rate and then it increases for the next 500GB or something like that.

It is a pay as you go solution. The more you use, the more you pay. That's normally how you pay for any cloud solutions.

We also evaluated Amazon, AWS, Microsoft, and Google cloud.

You will need high-speed bandwidth internet and a contact center for Microsoft for billing purposes. It is kind of a drag and drop and it is pretty simple to use. There is a small learning curve. 

If you create a folder at least one sample file has to be there. So sometimes it becomes irrelevant because unnecessarily I put a normal dummy file. And then from tomorrow onwards when the data starts doing it I delete the dummy file when the actual data is there. I find that pretty cumbersome. In the next release, I would like for them to update this.

The biggest lesson I have learned from using this solution is that Microsoft solutions are easy to use. 

I would rate it a nine out of ten. 

I think Azure has three versions. They have Block Blob Storage, then they also have the Gen1 and the Gen2 versions. Gen2 was kind of under review until just recently in 2020, but I think they have officially launched Gen2 now. Block Storage is an Azure product, but I am not sure if it has a version. I just know it as Azure Block Blob Storage.  

Our use case for Block Storage came about when we were building a database for one of our customers on public storage. The customer kept their data on-premises and on their own servers. We would get that data from them and put it into the Block Storage. So Block was being used as a file depository.  

I think there are several valuable features in the product. The security technically is good, but they require a lot of security rules to be set up. Even so, it was kind of easy to configure. So the security is good.  

I think the ease-of-use is also good because we can even upload files up from one machine onto other blob storage, another nice feature that is also provided. Apart from that, Azure also provides Azure Storage Explorer, which can be used to access Blob data once you map it onto a local machine.  

I think also its scalability is a good feature. You can put terabytes of data into Blob Storage. So that is also one of the beneficial features of Blob.  

Azure had the Blob version prior to Block. Azure also realized that Blob Storage did not really have any main space. So, that was a limitation of the Azure Blob product. But that is also the reason why they decided to develop the Gen2 version, which puts back all the right structure for the storage and capacity.  

So, it is good to explore Gen2 as another solution. I think most of the users would eventually move from Blob Storage to Gen2 only because of the space limitations of Blob.  

You also do not see the kind of folder search capability in Blob that you might expect. Like when you are in windows, you can just go to a particular folder and you can browse within that folder and you can go into subfolders and search there as well. That feature is kind of missing in the Blob product.  

So the inability to easily search subfolders and also the space limitation of Blob are really the biggest limitations of the product.  

What I would like to see in the next release — and I am not really sure if it is possible in cloud solutions — but it would be nice to provide a feature for being able to distribute large files.  

I was using Azure Block Storage for almost all of 2019.  

I think it a stable product.  

It is scalable.  

I think our team that worked on the Blob project was about ten members. That company was would qualify as a large company itself. This was a new solution that we were going to build for the company. I would say the size of their team was smaller than ours, but in terms of the team size and what they needed for maintenance, I think Azure Block was an adequate product to use.  

We had one admin on the team which is kind of required to set it up because of the security aspect. But I think Azure Block can be set up by just the developer alone. The main users of Azure Blob are always mostly developers and testers.  

I have had only one experience with Azure technical support and that was not for Blob. It was something else. But I am still really in touch with Azure support. I had put a call over there pending for a priority-one ticket. They have continued calling me to see if things are going okay and they are very friendly. So I would say I could definitely rate their technical support as nine-out-of-ten.  

When we approached the project for the client who we first deployed Block Storage for, this was a new platform for this customer. We looked at new opportunities. Prior to this, I used Hadoop. I was not the biggest consumer of the product but gained enough experience while using Hadoop as a file storage solution to see enough to know that setting it up takes a while. It was not very user-friendly. Azure is not even comparable because it is very user-friendly.  

Azure Blob Storage is very straightforward to setup. It is just about setting up a storage account, putting in a container, and that is all. It is pretty easy. It really takes just a few minutes.  

I have been looking into data warehousing technology for quite some time. I have experience on Teradata and I have experience on Azure. I have used Azure Data Factory and I have used Azure Databricks. I have been happy with the Azure products so this has played into my decisions.  

The advice I would give people about Block Storage is that I might recommend the product based upon the use cases and storage needs. Otherwise, if they are looking for something more robust, I would recommend using the Gen2 version, which is the biggest storage system of the Azure options.  

On a scale from one to ten where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate Microsoft Azure Block Storage as at least seven-out-of-ten. This is a seven primarily because of this Gen2 release. When it comes down to it, Gen2 is a more advanced product and other than when it comes to the price most of the users will not see Block Storage as a better solution.  

We use the solution to develop SaaS platforms on Azure. We utilize various Microsoft components like block storage and databases for this purpose.

Microsoft Azure Block Storage should improve its stability. 

The tool is scalable. 

Microsoft Azure Block Storage's support depends on what you pay. If you pay a high price, you can get good support. 

The tool's deployment is easy since it is a Microsoft cloud-based product. 

I did the deployment myself. 

Microsoft Azure Block Storage is expensive. Its licensing costs are monthly. 

I rate the overall solution a seven out of ten. 

Use cases for Microsoft Azure Block Storage involve cloud storage for website publishing and customer data sharing. Many customers utilize it for data-sharing purposes. Customers commonly use flash storage to store and access data. Storage is integral to various Software as a Service solutions, where Block Storage is automatically provisioned for premium or standard tiers.

Performance improvement depends on how we utilize the resources. The tool is most valuable for scenarios involving logs and monitoring. For example, logs are generated when using services like Front Door. The tool's most valuable function is providing secure access. Additionally, it connects with websites, allowing users to upload and download data. 

The tool is reliable and works fine. 

Improving the pricing structure would be beneficial. If the pricing could be more flexible and reduced, Microsoft Azure Block Storage would likely see increased usage.

I have been working with the product since 2014. 

I rate the solution's stability a nine out of ten. 

I rate the tool's scalability a ten out of ten. 

I've had a poor experience with Microsoft's technical support. Even without premium support, Microsoft's assistance hasn't been satisfactory. There have been instances where support staff lacked sufficient expertise to address issues. 

The tool's deployment is simple. 

The solution is useful for enterprise customers. I rate it a nine out of ten. 

We use Microsoft Azure Block Storage for storing data.

The most valuable features of Microsoft Azure Block Storage are it stores different types of data traditional data and connectivity through FTP. Additionally, we do not need a high-speed fetching system for operations and filesharing works well for us.

I have used Amazon's solutions which are better than Microsoft's. However, since I have predominately Microsoft solutions it is a better choice for me to use another Microsoft solution.

I have been using Microsoft Azure Block Storage for approximately one and a half years.

I rate the price of Microsoft Azure Block Storage a six out of ten.

We have a large team that uses the solution.

There are times the solution can be slowed down in response time.

I rate the scalability of Microsoft Azure Block Storage an eight out of ten.

I did not use the support. However, I heard the support was good.

The initial setup of Microsoft Azure Block Storage is simple.

The price of Microsoft Azure Block Storage is expensive. They should provide a more efficient cost.

I rate the price of Microsoft Azure Block Storage a six out of ten.

I rate Microsoft Azure Block Storage nine out of ten.

We use Block Storage for virtual stores that we build in our company. We use the blocks to connect one store to another.  The virtual shops we build on Azure have half a million users monthly. 

I have been using Azure Block Storage for five years.

Azure Block Storage is the most stable cloud storage solution we've used.

Azure Block Storage isn't as scalable as AWS.

The response time could be quicker. 

The ease of setup is the primary reason we use Azure Block Storage. The setup takes one or two days, and we had help from Microsoft. We had five people on our team.

We worked directly with Microsoft. We were in their startup partnership at the beginning.

I rate Azure Block Storage seven out of 10. 

Our primary use case is for long-term backup. We are customers of Microsoft.

Gearing is a very useful feature and the most valuable one for us. 

The technical support could be improved and the price could be more flexible for clients. 

I've been using this solution for 10 years. 

The solution is stable. 

The solution is scalable enough for our needs. We have around 200 users and are a small to medium-sized company. 

When I get hold of the right person in customer support, the service is good. But it's sometimes difficult to get to that because there are so many departments and different support teams that it's difficult to find the right queue. 

The initial setup is simple for me because I have a lot of experience. There are some frustrating elements with the solution that require the updating of PowerShell modules each day and that requires a lot of work. 

Moving from a lower tier to a higher tier license requires additional payment and is expensive. When you have some Block Store in the archive tier and you want to get it back to the hot or cold tier, it's too expensive.

I rate this solution eight out of 10.