Microsoft Azure Object Storage Reviews

For us, there was a specific use case where we were trying to collect some of the information and this was a project related to IoT information collection. That is where we used Object Storage. There was bot storage used as well. We were trying to collect some information from smart meters. That smart meter solution that we developed for the customer required both Object Storage as well as Block Storage.

There are a variety of good features. Which one is best really depends on the customer's focus or specific deployment. 

The initial setup is pretty straightforward. 

The solution offers good documentation.

When you get the right support person, you can deal with issues very fast.

While we defined the solution, it was not fully implemented before I left. Therefore, it would be difficult to point to an area that was lacking. 

Technical support with Microsoft is a bigger challenge as finding the right person to support you and actually getting that person on the call is hard. If you are able to get the right person on the call, then he is able to help fast. That said, in most cases, getting the right person on the call itself is a challenge.

The setup process could always be a bit easier. It's hard to find good resources. With the cloud being new, it's difficult to find the people who have done it already.

I've been using the solution for three to six months. It's been less than a year so far. 

I left before the solution was fully implemented. Therefore, while I did not see any instability, I can't speak to how stable it was once it was up and running. 

From our requirement perspective, the required scalability existed in the solution. We had no issues with scaling. 

I've interacted with technical support. They were okay. However, getting the person you need to assist you can be a challenge. 

Neutral

I have been comfortable with Microsoft technology, in general, and Microsoft approaches in the past as well. That's the reason, in most cases, I prefer to use Microsoft solutions as such.

The process is not that complex. There is a challenge finding resources who understand the cloud, however. With most of the technologies, there is enough documentation, however, what happens is, when you are looking at the whole ecosystem as such, you need resources that know what is happening. Generally, there are articles that can assist you with the setup. Therefore, for those who have knowledge with the solution, it's straightforward, however, newer users would find it possibly a bit complex. 

I'm not sure how many people would be required to maintain the solution. 

I haven't gotten a chance to evaluate this solution in comparison to others. For example, I've never been able to compare Object Storage on AWS.

The company I worked for was a Microsoft gold partner. We were Azure partners as well. 

We use a private cloud deployment. There were some sensitive products that were supposed to only be available as a part of the private cloud, even though they were in the Azure cloud, they were fully accessible from the internal network.

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten.

We are using Microsoft Azure Object Storage for storing customer content. Our applications are running on Kubernetes, and the content is stored on the Microsoft Azure Object Storage. For example, we are using the queues for email. We have a couple of web jobs that are running that pick up the object from the queues. Additionally, we are using it for the files.

The most valuable feature of Microsoft Azure Object Storage is that it is on the cloud.

We have experienced a data copy bottleneck with the AZ copy using Microsoft Azure Object Storage, this should improve. It has high CPU consumption. There are a couple of ways to copy files fast, we have tried a few ways. Other than AZ copy, we can use Azure Fluent Storage, which also takes a lot of time to copy files. The AZ copy is faster but it takes a lot of time and CPU operations.

Microsoft Storage Explorer is used for connectivity but it needs to be improved.

On the backend side, it is not an easy implementation, and if they introduced a solution roadmap, that would be great.

I have been using Microsoft Azure Object Storage for approximately six years.

Microsoft Azure Object Storage is somewhat stable, but some improvements need to be applied. I can remember, it was down one time. We have faced a lot of issues since our application is tightly coupled with storage. More than 700 customers were affected during that time period. A lot of queries came, and lots of tickets were created for us because the storage was down.

Microsoft Azure Object Storage can scale in terms of users using the solution.

I am in a team of 50 and I am the manager of the team. In our company, all the project teams, and developers are using Microsoft Azure Object Storage mostly in the repair. We have approximately 300 to 500 developers using the solution.

I have contacted the support when the Microsoft Azure Object Storage could not be accessed. They did the recovery but it took them some time, approximately 10 hours.

We have only used Microsoft solutions.

The initial setup of Microsoft Azure Object Storage for me is easy, but it depends on the person. If you do not have much experience it is not as easy. The whole process of implementation took 15 to 20 minutes. We have automated a lot of the processes.

When doing the deployment of Microsoft Azure Object Storage we have experienced some issues with our scripts and the automation.

We have one person in my team that is managing Microsoft Azure Object Storage.

The licensing cost of Microsoft Azure Object Storage is monthly. We have two types of licenses. One is the EA enterprise license and the other is a CSP license.

My advice to others is if you're going to be copying the data in Microsoft Azure Object Storage it will be slow.

I rate Microsoft Azure Object Storage an eight out of ten.

I worked in Azure Cloud mostly on the Databricks side, with SQL Server or Synapse Analytics, or streaming analytics. It's a blob storage solution. We use the storage account, either the blob storage or the ADLS Gen 2.

We can do data queries easily. If it's a JSON document or XML document, mostly we deliver the APIs, calls, and all. The document is stored as an object stored in the Blob Storage. Then, using the Databricks, we try to process that JSON and then load it into a Delta Lake table. That is where we interact mostly with Object Storage.

The initial setup is straightforward. 

If we look at the different versions of that ADLS, it really does not have a hierarchical storage mechanism. If you want to store any document, you have to go and create one blob storage account, in case you want to store any hierarchical data. 

The solution is stable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

It's all scalable. It has lifecycle management where I can define a rule so that I can easily archive or move the data from the cool tier to the hot tier based on the uses and then I can also send it into the cool tier so that it can be frequently accessed. If I do that, the cost can also be minimized.

Technical support is great. We have a partnership basically with Microsoft. For my organization, Microsoft is the partner vendor. Whenever it is required, support is readily available to us.

Positive

I'm also familiar with Amazon S3. 

The initial setup is straightforward. You just have to create a storage account. You can automate that also. You have different mechanisms. You can use Azure templates, like SQL, or you can use the Terraform as well. To automate the creation of that object storage or any account. Or, if you have different APIs, like Python-based API, you can easily create what you need.

If we compare most of the other cloud vendor solutions, for example, S3 Object, S3 with the Blob Storage, more or less, both have the same capabilities. However, from a security perspective, Azure is very good. Azure offers AD integration with the storage account. That is something I find as a good feature compared to the other clouds and integration with all the Azure services is a really useful feature.

We're a gold partner with Microsoft.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten due to the ADLS integration and the different authentication mechanisms that we have.

We need to make sure that the data which we are storing in those storage objects is highly secured. That is where Azure is providing us with the best features. We can go with the different mechanisms like its Nexus security or the AD authentication. Or, they also provide us admin encryption, including the transparent keys. With transparent encryption, we can encrypt based on customer-based keys. Those are also some good features that make it a really great product.

Microsoft Azure Object Storage is integrated into the applications that we provide our customers. Job dockets, regulatory documents, licenses, and insurance-related are the most common types of documents that our application users store in their storage containers. 

Apart from that, the job docket probably moves from one person to another and only authorized users can have access to view or download using a secure URL with a token and the shared access signature. This comes with an important feature that allows us to limit the time the users have access to the files on the storage.

Another aspect we have is for internal purposes, like having database backups over specific timelines. Internal application docket messages between the web and mobile application users including attachments that can be retained or archived for several years. All of this works under a multi-tenant structure.

The best thing is that it's on the cloud and accessible through any mobile, tablet, or laptop device. Easily configurable and integrated with any of our applications through its client libraries. 

Secure and having the option to setup additional regions for high availability.

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I have been using Microsoft Azure Object Storage consistently for the past two years. 

Microsoft Azure Object Storage is stable. I haven't had any issues. Initially, when I was conducting hands-on workshops in the past few years most of the client-side libraries used to connect with Azure Storage have become obsolete and the newly updated libraries are simple and easy to work with.

Microsoft Azure Object Storage is a scalable solution. I believe this will grow, just like AWS, because it's totally isolated, and even websites could use that separately. I think Azure is beginning to take that path where other applications could directly connect to it and use the storage system. I believe there is a feature to interconnect all the other products they have.

The initial setup was quick. You definitely need some help with that, and Microsoft provides resources for learning. I have in the past attended workshops that came in handy when working with this solution. It's easy to use if you have some hands-on experience. There are online courses with hands-on labs available in some cases on Microsoft Learn which makes understanding and using this solution easier.

Pay per-use subscription has been our option and I see no problem using this subscription model as we are able to keep track of our costs on a daily basis

It's primarily used by our data science team. They use it to augment any of the works that they probably cannot do very well in KNIME.

It's a very powerful tool, however, we don't use it to the right level. We are still learning the tool. We have this very powerful engine that we are not yet utilizing to the next level. At the moment, we're just trying to see whether we have automated ML scripts that we can adopt to train a model, for example. Really we're using it for proof of concept. We haven't deployed anything to production.

It's easy to use.

We're still testing the solution. It's too early to make any suggestions as to what may be missing.

We've been using the solution for two years. 

The stability is quite good. there are no bugs or glitches and it doesn't crash or freeze, it is reliable. 

We've never had any problem with scaling. It is scalable. Being a government institution and having that contract signed at the government level, we just have to request additional resources or storage capacity. It's very good.

Technical support is very good. 

We initially started our journey on KNIME and we run KNIME side by side, so data scientists can have the ability to do their models either in Lime or, if they choose to, they can also do that in Azure.

The solution is very easy to set up. It's not overly complex. 

We've got this Microsoft contract and we have round-the-clock Microsoft engineers who are able to actually assist us with any problems.

We're customers and end-users.

It's a very powerful tool. I love the fact that Microsoft was really committed to improving it. Therefore, from the early days that we started using it, we can actually see that continuously there are changes and improvements. They do listen to their customers. They really try to make sure that they have a best-in-class product.

Microsoft would be very good for very big organizations. In terms of KNIME, the good thing is you can actually scale it down with a small organization that doesn't want to really go really big. They both work and they're complementary. 

I would rate it eight out of ten.

We use the Azure Object Storage for our IoT use case. We have thousands of vendors using our machines and they are sending machine performance data to Azure. We then use this data for analytics and product management.

We use it both in our development and production environments.

The most valuable options are performance and scalability. These two things are really effective.

The cost should be reduced to make it more competitive. There are other vendors that provide good solutions, so if Microsoft were more competitive in terms of pricing then it would be one reason for us to continue with them.

I would like to have out-of-the-box connectors to make integration with other products easier.

We have been using Azure Object Storage for the past two and a half years.

Azure is 100% stable, although there was an issue one time when the entire service was down for a day. This had a big impact, globally, although they were able to compromise with people who were affected.

This solution is used by the consumers of our products, of which there are at least 10,000.

Microsoft technical support is good because we have an enterprise agreement. We are happy with it.

We had our own servers, on-premises, and then we migrated to Azure.

The initial setup was of medium difficulty. I would not say that it is simple or complex, and they have good documentation to help.

It took more than six months to fully migrate to the Azure environment.

In the beginning, we had assistance from Microsoft. They helped us to come up with the proof of concept and the use case for our business. After that, our internal team took over. I would say that we had about 10% external help.

Azure Object Storage is a product that I strongly recommend for storing all of your unstructured data. Similarly, if you don't know what kinds of data you need to store, then this is the right choice. It also does well if you have massive volume.

There is an IoT hub that is going to be released and my hope is that it includes many advanced features.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

Our use case is related to a data lake. It is just a file collection.

I am using its latest version. It is in the cloud through a private company.

AzCopy is probably the best feature. It's a scripting app or a scripting function. Whether it's a Linux batch or a PowerShell script, you can essentially just send a file via a line of code with a specific key.

Currently, the Microsoft Azure Storage Explorer is just a Windows app. I don't know if it's available on mobile, such as iOS or Android. I don't know if the app is mobile-friendly. It should be mobile-friendly.

I've been using it every day for four years.

It is stable.

I haven't hit any limitations yet, and I'd say it is scalable. There are probably different scaling solutions, such as a data lake or a data warehouse. Those would be the next version of this, as opposed to binary large object storage.

We have less than five users.

It's a Microsoft product. They're the best software company in the world. So, the support is quick. It is immediate. Sometimes, it is too quick but pretty helpful. They'll get you through the problem. Their support is definitely very good.

It is easy to set up. You just sign in. You have to have a cloud subscription. Once you deploy a disk or any sort of object that can be manipulated in the cloud on a cloud-based model, all you do is sign in, and access should be granted to that resource.

It was implemented in-house. I take care of its deployment and maintenance.

It has a pay-as-you-go model. So, you are only paying for what you store. It's an attractive model. You don't pay for a set; you pay for what you actually use.

It's definitely one of the top Azure Cloud objects out there for file storage and accessing files. Especially if you're using the Microsoft ecosystem, it's definitely one of the best tools for cloud storage for files.

I would rate it a nine out of ten just because of the mobile presence.