Microsoft Azure File Storage Reviews

We use the solution for our live cloud servers, such as our application servers. We also use the solution for backups and file security.

My client had zero data loss while using the solution for backups and file security.

It would be good if they added some features that make the solution easier to access for everyone.

I've worked with the solution for the last one or two years.

I rate Microsoft Azure File Storage's stability an eight or nine out of ten.

I rate Microsoft Azure File Storage's scalability an eight or nine out of ten.

The solution is completely supported. They provide solutions to our problems.

Positive

The setup process for the solution is simple.

The solution is suitable for medium and enterprise-sized businesses from a commercial standpoint. I rate the solution an eight or nine out of ten because it is reasonably priced.

The solution is very competitive with AWS and Google's cloud solutions. They have common features, but I'm comparing them on a commercial basis.

I rate Microsoft Azure File Storage a nine out of ten.

The solution is easy to use.

They should make the solution more user-friendly.

We have been using the solution for almost three years.

It is a stable solution.

It is a scalable solution. There are around 100 solution users in our company.

The solution is easy to set up. It requires three to four executives to deploy and takes 15-20 minutes to complete.

I recommend the solution to others and rate it a nine.

My company is a managed services firm. We do have a firewall internally, but we have about 70 banks and probably about 30 to 40 clients in other verticals that we are servicing. So it is not just us or our clients that we use products for. I am constantly looking at a lot of different client bases as far as different industries and needs, and a lot of different solutions and possibilities.  

A lot of what we use Azure File Storage for at our company is BLOB storage because the format is flexible in terms of pulling stuff down. Usually what we are doing is storing and retrieving IT management information. We have to be able to store and pull specific files from storage. BLOB storage is a good solution for that type of management.  

Most of our clients are using a private cloud because it is a requirement for them. As financial institutions, that is kind of where they have to go to properly secure critical data. We go public because there is no requirement on our end to do private cloud. For our financial institution clients, there are requirements from oversight boards and governing institutions that they need to have critical information stored privately because they are handling people's money.  

The main thing that is valuable about the solution is just the reason you do cloud: because it is flexible. For example, right now we are working on a project for a client and they are entirely involved with the Azure suite. They are using Intune for MDM (Mobile Device Management) and Azure AD for their authentication. That is all nice and well and good, but then they need a server. So what we are going to do is to push data into Azure from the data center and part of it to the house server. The thing with that is it is a flexible solution and it is easy to ramp up or down depending on their compute needs.  

I think the place where the product really needs the most attention is in the Intune and the MDM products. They are building it out pretty quickly in updates, yet at the same time that is probably the place where I have seen the most reason to simplifying for ease-of-use. Right now you kind of have to spend some time to wrap your head around the product instead of it being something that is easier to use and easier to onboard into production. In a way, that is just part of the industry standard right now. Any MDM product you choose is going to be a little difficult that way, and it is going to require some build-out that is maybe more than you had expected or cared to dive into.  

If they improved Intune to where it was more deployable out-of-the-box, that would be great. We just have to wait and see if they can do it.  

We have been using the Azure File Storage solution for a few years now at the company I am with. I started utilizing that solution for storage initially with clients about three or four years ago. I actually brought the company I am working for now onto the Azure platform before I started working at the company and that led them to using the Azure File Storage solution.  

The stability of the product is fine. It is stable. It is just something you have to pay attention to in the management of how you want it to perform. In that way, it is just like everything else.  

It is scalable. But it is really the same deal for just about any product of this type. Everything is stable and everything is scalable to the extent of time that you are willing to invest in it to make it that way. Some products are not worth the time.  

The number of users and how they are using the product depends on the client. In our organization, everyone has to use the product, otherwise, they can not work. So that is 100% of them because we require it. It will not be the same way in every organization.  

I have had some experience with the technical support for Azure. Your experience with the support team will depend on the situation. Microsoft splits out their support infrastructure based on two different areas of the planet. So if you are talking about dealing with the Philippines call center, it is much more in line with expectations going on in the US in terms of speed and efficiency and meeting the needs of the client. Whereas if you are talking about their outsourced support infrastructure in India, there are some procedures you have to deal with that makes the support process a little harder if you are not aware of them. Neither of the support teams are bad, they are just different. Getting the support you want is just a matter of being aware of who and what you are dealing with in both situations.  

The other thing I would say is that we are a provider. We sell the product and we are a Microsoft silver partner. Because of that, we get to contact a different support infrastructure than somebody who does not have that type of relationship with Microsoft. I have experience with it from both sides. There was a time when I was running a nonprofit and I had to call into support and I did not have a provider who had silver partner status. It was a lot harder to get support then because I would have to call in and I just got the tier-one guys all the time. Now, as a silver partner, I can call in and get the right person on the phone the first time without waiting or trying to get past the tier-one guys. So, support is fine depending on your relationship with the company and the context of the issue which may include your location or the size of the organization.  

The initial setup was complex. There is a lot to do to build it out. There are a lot of nuances to how the MDM works and that makes Intune a little bit harder to work with. Unless you have done it a few times and paved the pain points of some of the things that you have to do in configuring it, it is going to be hard.  

At the same time, it is hard to say how long a deployment takes. That is because you can roll out Intune in a matter of a few minutes, but building it out to function the way you want it to is the part that impacts the speed in which you implement it.  

We did not use an integrator or reseller or consultant for the deployment because that is what we do. We are those things and we deal with the problems that you face in deployments every day.  

We try to push as many clients as we can toward Azure because most of our clients are Office 365 clients as it stands already, so they already have Azure integrated. They have the authentication and because of that, it allows us to push Azure a little easier because it is already native to the products they are using and familiar to their users. 

On a scale from one to ten where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate this solution as a six. Currently, you just have to spend too much time wrapping your head around what the product does and how it does it. Then the build-out takes a lot of effort. If it took less effort in that way — especially from my perspective as a reseller and consultant where implementation is so important — then I could rate it higher. The economy of scale plays in, but it is just hard to invest into that build-out on the front end.  

Our use case depends on data structure types and needs of the customer. If I know that a customer has different types of structure, like semi-structured, unstructured, and structured data, then I have to use Azure Data Lake storage. If it's structured, I can directly use Azure SQL or Azure Synapse Analytics to process my data. 

The most valuable feature is that it supports many file formats like XML, CSV, XBRL, and media types. 

I think the pricing of the product can be reduced. 

I have been using the solution for one and a half years. 

I would rate the stability a nine out of ten. 

I would rate the scalability an eight out of ten. Enterprises, medium and small businesses can use this solution. The size of the company doesn't matter. It's suitable for any sized company. 

The initial setup is simple. I would rate the setup a five out of ten. Consultants are required for the deployment of the solution. 

I would rate the pricing a six out of ten. 

My advice would be to get information about the products and features Microsoft provides. I would rate the solution an eight out of ten. 

The solution is easy to use and works well.

We've been happy with the monitoring capabilities.

The interface is very good.

The setup is easy.

The pricing could be improved. They need to make the costs more transparent so users know what they will be charged and why ahead of time.

Technical support could be improved.

We've been using the solution for seven years.

Over the past seven years, the solution has been mostly stable. We haven't experienced any stability issues that have been catastrophic. The solution overall has been fine.

We've had contact with technical support in the past. They're mostly okay. The level of service, however, varies. They could work to make it a bit better.

The initial setup is straightforward. We find it easy to implement.

I deployed the solution myself seven years ago. I didn't need the assistance of a reseller or specialist.

The pricing is a little bit hard to determine. I never know how much it's going to cost me in advance, only after the fact.

We use quite a few different products on Azure. For example, we also use Azure Backup and Stack.

A small team at our organization is using the software. We use the solution daily.

I don't really have any advice to give to others. I would just say that it's pretty straightforward and it works well for our team.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. It's generally okay. It doesn't blow my mind in the sense that it's so unique or revolutionary. It does what it needs to do.

Our primary use case of this solution to migrate several products to the cloud. We use several Microsoft products simultaneously. 

I like the diverse facilities offered by the solution. If a facility tool upgrades, it also upgrades in the cloud. This is very dynamic. Is it very easy to manage and we haven't had any problems with file system limitations or performances. The backup to the firewall has been working well. I like the speed of the program.

So far we haven't had any difficulties with migrations. Sometimes I call support to help me with the migration of the servers. So far it has been all very easy.

We haven't had any issues with the stability of the solution.

We haven't faced any issues in terms of scalability so far.

Microsoft has a good support systems and we have good relationship so far. We have our own team of engineers to help us whenever we have an issue, but whenever we contact Microsoft for support, they are there to give us the help we need.

I have a small contract with Amazon, but I don't use that very often because it doesn't offer that much storage.

The setup was easy and straightforward and the deployment didn't take too long. It is a static plan, so we have to see it first and then we organize. We did have some help from a consultant when we did the deployment. 

Implementations with other products are easy. In the past we had to use a multi-cloud, but we had a preference for one unique tool for each subject that we wanted to manage. So now we are using one cloud only. We had a very new team and we were building everything from scratch.

I will rate this solution an eight out of ten. We haven't been using it very long, but we don't have any complaints. The interface is easy to work on, but sometimes it takes very long to refresh the information. Perhaps that can be improved. It is not a big problem but it would be nice if you could get what you need straight away. So an improvement in the design and speed of things would be great. 

We are using the VP storage version.

Our primary use case is for roaming profiles flowing on the frictional desktop.

In terms of features that I've found most valuable, I would say none.

We have performance issues with Microsoft Azure File Storage. We have a standard version and we have also a premium version. I would like to upgrade to premium but that is not possible on the fly. So you really need to do a migration.

I was investigating when do I get to the boundaries of the premium storage. Because now we have a couple of users using it, but I'm sure that once we got to premium, there will come a time that we will again have performance issues.

That's why I was looking into comparisons with the NetApp store. It seems that it has a higher performance for the roaming profile.

I feel that we cannot just upgrade but we should really do an immigration with all the difficulties.

There are limits to the usage capacity-wise, and it is not easy to measure because they just use some other figures. You really need to understand what you are seeing if you do performance monitoring.

I do not think that NetApp is better in that way, to be honest.

I have been using Microsoft Azure File Storage for half a year.

Microsoft Azure File Storage is not that scalable. Once you reach the boundaries, you need to migrate to another solution.

We do plan to increase usage, though. We now we have these roaming profiles that are for the frictional desktop and we have currently around 120 users on the platform. That will grow. But we cannot grow further with the solution. So we need to migrate to the premium solution, then we can grow a bit. I don't feel that it is coping with 3000 users.

That's why we're looking for another solution.

I'm currently dealing with the support. It takes a long time to see if that performance issue is really because of the file storage. It takes at least a week before they act.

There is certainly room for improvement here.

The initial setup is fairly easy.

Overall, I think Microsoft Azure File Storage is workable, but you really need to make a design to make it redundant. There is a possibility to connect several discs, several file storage accounts. Then you can make it scalable yourself. I'm fully comfortable with that solution. We worked it out that we direct users to different storage accounts. But that all needs to be done before you start. Before you start, you really need to consider your design and make it scalable yourself. That's my recommendation.

I think that they should implement on the background so that you can upgrade and migrate on the fly. 

It doesn't feel hardware-wise that I'm working in a cloud, and it doesn't really feel like cloud. It feels like I have a dedicated device disc I am working on and that doesn't provide me the cloud experience. Because I'm working on the dedicated device I expect that I can read the usual suspects as normal, the IOPS, et cetera, and those figures are not provided standardly.

I am sure that we will find a solution. It integrates very well and is easy to implement.

But like I said, I expect more of the cloud experience.

So taking all that together, on a scale of one to ten I would give Microsoft Azure File Storage a six.

We are partners with Microsoft and I'm an executive of the company.  

The most valuable feature is the integration with the entire Azure platform, very bluntly and very simply how it's embedded, how you can use it. That's the sort of factor that sets the solution apart. 

I'd like to see integration with other platforms as part of the solution. If you have a company to do cloud strategy that could have an impact.

I've been using this solution for two years. 

This is a stable solution. 

The solution is scalable. It's one of the strengths of the product. 

We have support staff within the company. I have never ever had the need to call anybody from Microsoft support. If we do call support on other matters, then our directors have links to Microsoft, but I've never had the need for myself. 

The initial setup is straightforward. Deployment time depends on the size of the project but it's easy and simple.  

I would certainly recommend this product, especially if you are working with the Microsoft and Azure ecosystem, because then it's really easy to be used and you get all the benefits and I can't think of any reason not to like it. Once you're on the platform, it should be that it's more a question of how strong the solution is. 
 
I would rate this solution a nine out of 10.