Microsoft Azure Block Storage Reviews

I initially set up Block Storage for archival log purposes and used Azure Data Explorer to push logs to it. This was more cost-effective for me since I needed to do threat hunting for logs that were older than a year. We then moved our production server backup and recovery to Block Storage due to the security it offers. The solution is very easy to configure security on Block Storage, whether through access keys, TLS versions, or REST API security.

We're not opting for the public cloud due to the majority of our data being PNC. However, if we need to make any of our data publicly available, we use AFS as well as Azure File Sharing. AFS is fully encrypted and structured with methods for Block Storage, such as POST and DELETE portals. Usually, we use authentication measures on private parts that require anything to be made public. To ensure secure access, we first authenticate the authorized person and then grant them access to the depositories from outside the network.

Redundancy is essential for disaster recovery, and I have found that relying on SAN storage or old, on-prem services is a complicated process that often yields unsatisfactory results. Even with the proper maintenance of the data, power, and backups, these services rarely recover more than 70 percent of data in case of outages or natural disasters. Therefore, it is clear that 100 percent data recovery cannot be achieved using on-prem solutions. The purpose of the test is to evaluate the best option for data redundancy, protection, and management. We can choose from Azure's Local Redundancy Storage, Geo Redundancy Storage, or Read Access Geo Redundancy Storage. Additionally, for data protection, we can enable soft delete or versioning of the block to track all changes. Finally, for data management, we can enable settings for security.

Microsoft is currently updating a few features, such as object sizes and tiering, which were not available previously. They have created inventories and utilized snapshots for container partition calculations.

The cost of the solution has room for improvement. Microsoft Azure Block Storage is priced higher than alternative solutions.

I have been using the solution for almost five years.

I give the stability a nine out of ten. I have not seen any outages, or leaks in the last four years.

I would give the scalability a seven out of ten. Although none of these services are perfect, the scalability of Azure is practically unlimited, depending on how much one is willing to pay and the amount of data one needs to store.

We currently have 50 people using Microsoft Azure Block Storage in our organization to protect the network.

As we are a gold partner, our support is fast. When we create a ticket, the Microsoft support team usually responds within 15 minutes or less. We also have our own team that helps to resolve issues quickly.

We also use Amazon S3 due to the fact that 80 percent of our tenants are already using it. Amazon offers a lot of advantages in terms of storage capacity, scalability, and ease of access. However, we must be mindful of security when using Amazon as it may not be as straightforward as it is when using Azure. Both are serverless but Amazon's security is more complex.

The initial setup is straightforward. Opening a service does not require much effort, as it is already automated. However, if we plan to use other services such as a Python library or storage account, there is a certain process we need to follow. The REST APIs and shared keys will be needed for this purpose. This information is already available in the forum.

I would rate Azure a three out of ten for pricing. Amazon and Azure offer different features and require different configurations. For example, some settings must be manually enabled in Amazon, whereas many security and compliance settings are enabled by default in Azure. Azure is more secure in this respect and therefore Microsoft charges more.

I give the solution a seven out of ten.

When using block storage to store data, the improvement in capacity comes at the cost of higher charges. Additionally, to use the block storage we need to enable a few services, though not for production, and then push the downloads to block storage. They need to be vigilant in looking for encryption and other security measures, and Microsoft is doing its part in updating the system. I have not encountered any issues with the block storage. We have a CSPM in place to ensure any security gaps are managed and taken care of.

We have embarked on the journey of the global data list. All the data from the SAP systems, all the data from external vendors, and all the data from our enterprise data warehouse are staged onto the Azure Block Storage. It forms the basis of the Lakehouse architecture. That's the staging layer for us.

It has helped to centralize the data. People see it as the central source of truth. Everybody sees the same set of data across data analysts, business analysts, data scientists, and all the visualization people. It provides a centralized view of the same data.

The product offers hierarchical storage and we like the main space storage with business.

It's easy to set up.

We find the product to be stable. 

It is very scalable. 

The solution needs a direct connection to visualization. Power BI connectivity on this platform is not that great. We need a direct connection to any of the visualization tools. There should be more BI integrations.

Block Storage is something which I use on a day-to-day basis. I've used the solution for six years at least.

It's pretty stable. It has cloning and therefore has data redundancy. The disaster recovery is pretty easy with this solution.

The solution can scale well.

The solution is used across the organization in BI and data visualization leads. There are more than 300 people using it.

The use is increasing month to month with more and more data being placed into it. It's an ongoing process.

Technical support is very good. 

This was the default product we went with thanks to our partnership with Microsoft.

The initial setup was straightforward, not that complex. 

Setting up was probably a month's time, not more.

The DevOps engineers would be required for the deployment. In fact, data engineers can do it if there's no proper CIC mechanism, however, any DevOps expert can do it.

We handled the deployment in-house. 

I'm from the technology side, so I have not done that ROI comparison. It is not visible to me directly. However, I have heard that there was a bottom-line increase. 

The storage part costs us $223. That's on a monthly basis for 20TB of data storage. There are no additional costs.

We did not look into other options. 

I am a customer of Microsoft products.

We are dealing with the Azure Block ADLS Gen 2.

People should use the mechanism to save more costs. We have a hot tier and a cold tier, wherein, say you want to save more on your cost, the frequently accessed data should be in the hot, and data that is not accessed frequently should be moved to the cold tier. It helps in reducing costs by almost 50%. The tiering mechanism should be used and new users should know it is possible to arrange their data that way. 

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

I use Microsoft Azure Block Storage, Microsoft Azure Cloud, and Microsoft Azure Communication Services in my company to send emails. My company uses Azure Database for PostgreSQL. I use the three main cloud products in my company right now.

Microsoft Azure Block Storage is useful for storing files. If your company has an application that requires you to store files, then Microsoft Azure Block Storage is a very easy tool that allows users to store and handle files while allowing for file versioning.

Microsoft Azure Block Storage is an easy-to-use tool as it has a lot of APIs and libraries, making it a very easy product to get started with for a user. I think it has good APIs and libraries.

The solution's downside is related to its documentation, which I believe can be difficult to navigate because it is hidden between or within other pages of the product's manual. There are not a lot of core resources around to dig deep into when it comes to Microsoft Azure Block Storage. A user must do a lot of research around the product, which is a slow process.

In Microsoft Azure Block Storage, navigation through its documentation can be made easier. The documentation should also contain more examples to help users.

With Microsoft Azure Block Storage, sometimes in our company, we have noticed some errors in our error logging and management platform without providing much context as to why the error occurred. I think maybe more descriptive error messages will be helpful.

I have been using Microsoft Azure Block Storage for eight months.

It is a pretty stable solution.

Microsoft Azure Block Storage is a very scalable tool. My company has not had scalability issues with the product. The solution can handle many file uploads quickly and straightforwardly. With Microsoft Azure Block Storage, you can access your files on Microsoft Edge, so it's a good tool that offers scalability.

Though my organization hasn't launched Microsoft Azure Block Storage for use in our company, we plan to have around 1,000 users use it daily.

I have experience with AWS Cloud9. Based on the requirements for the current project in our company, we chose Microsoft Azure Block Storage.

The product's initial setup phase was straightforward, and if you need extra security, you have to do more probing. I believe the setup phase to start the product is pretty straightforward.

The product's setup phase with the whole of Azure and the documentation part took a few hours.

Microsoft Azure Block Storage's deployment process is not directly tied to Microsoft Cloud Storage, as it allows for the issue of APIs. Unless you are talking about deploying our company's applications, which would lead to a different conversation at this point, I can say that Microsoft Azure Block Storage's deployment process is a simple plug-and-play, after which you have access to the product.

Microsoft Azure Block Storage is a service provided by Microsoft, so it is not something that you deploy. If you already have the whole Azure infrastructure in place, then all you have to do is deal with the provisioning of an account and take care of the usage part of the solution to let Azure know if you want the services to be billed or not before you get it up and running. Azure manages the infrastructure where its products are used, so it's not deployed on an on-premises model or anything like that, as it is considered to be a managed service.

For the deployment and maintenance phases of Microsoft Azure Block Storage, you need a developer to write the codes to do whatever function you want. Then, you would need a DevOps person to ensure that the infrastructure provisioning is correct.

My company did not seek any help from the consultation to take care of the implementation process of the product since we only had to follow the instructions provided in the documentation to deal with the setup phase.

My company did not have to pay any licensing charges while using Microsoft Azure Block Storage.

Microsoft Azure Block Storage is a pretty cheap and affordable product, so we have not seen any budget issues related to the solution in our company. In our company, we knew our requirements in terms of the amount of files we wanted to be handled by the product.

I recommend the product to those who plan to use it.

The setup can be a bit tedious, especially if you try to do it by navigating through its documentation.

I rate the overall product an eight out of ten.

We use the tool to connect with Power BI to make visualizations. We also use it to store data.

The product’s security features are valuable.

The user interface is very difficult. It is not user-friendly. We need time to understand the product and create a container. It would be nice if the user interface were made simpler. The documentation is difficult to understand. There are no videos on the website. It is difficult for a new user to understand the solution.

I have been using the solution for one year and three months.

The tool is stable. I rate the stability a ten out of ten.

I rate the tool’s scalability a ten out of ten. We might have 500 to 1000 users in our organization.

I connect with our internal team for access issues.

Positive

Amazon’s UI is very simple. We can directly create a function in Amazon S3.

The initial setup is difficult. It is very difficult to identify the things we need. I rate the ease of setup an eight out of ten. Deploying the solution takes less than a minute, but the process is difficult.

The product is costlier than Amazon S3.

Overall, I rate the tool an eight out of ten.

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. 

The use case for Microsoft Azure Block Storage depends on the project and the users. Still, I use it for storing and extracting data, such as images, videos, and documents.

What I like best about Microsoft Azure Block Storage is the accessibility because it's very easy for me to access it. Microsoft takes the user's approach, so you don't have to take many steps before accessing the tool. As soon as you create Microsoft Azure Block Storage resources, you'll automatically find it easy to use it.

If you need to learn how to start, you'll find different resources and documentation about the tool, so this is another pro of Microsoft Azure Block Storage.

Another advantage of using the tool is that it's convenient because if you want to deploy new infrastructure, you can connect to the cloud and download the files to your new site.

I found that everything works fine in Microsoft Azure Block Storage; though it may be because I have less experience with it, I cannot give any areas for improvement.

I want to see my region added to the data center. I'm in Africa, and if a data center is specifically added under Central Africa, that will reduce data latency when accessing data. Right now, you can only find the USA, China, Europe, South Africa, and Egypt, but no Central Africa. It'll be great if Microsoft can add my region or location as a data center for Microsoft Azure Block Storage. Doing that will respect privacy, too.

I've used Microsoft Azure Block Storage for six months. It depends on the project I'm working on.

Microsoft Azure Block Storage is scalable. When you use Azure File Sync, Microsoft gives you five terabytes of storage on Microsoft Azure Block Storage. You can scale by paying for a group or a big enterprise if you have a considerable amount of data.

I didn't have to contact the technical support team of Microsoft Azure Block Storage because I had all that I needed from the documentation.

I didn't use a different solution. I only used Microsoft Azure Block Storage. You can integrate it with various services, and it has the facility to connect to your site and communicate with it, but I don't require that. Enterprises can use that functionality of Microsoft Azure Block Storage, though.

Setting up Microsoft Azure Block Storage was easy, and it only took two minutes. I researched how to do it, but before you set up Microsoft Azure Block Storage, you must create your agile accounts first, and inside the agile accounts, you'll find different types of storage. In my case, I chose Microsoft Azure Block Storage for data storage and extraction. It was easy to set up.

I deployed Microsoft Azure Block Storage.

Microsoft Azure Block Storage is a good investment. The tool helps an enterprise save data in the cloud. Sometimes there is a natural disaster, or your electricity is cut off. Sometimes your physical servers can have problems. You can store data in the cloud through Microsoft Azure Block Storage to avoid problems, so it's a good investment.

Microsoft Azure Block Storage is not an expensive tool. I'm subscribed to the Microsoft Learn Student Ambassadors program, so Microsoft gives me between $120 to $150 credit each month. It's renewable, and if I use that credit for Microsoft Azure Block Storage, it'll not consume half of my credit, so I'd say it's very cheap.

I use Microsoft Azure Block Storage personally. My company doesn't use it.

I recommend the tool to others who want to use it.

Based on my experience, I rate Microsoft Azure Block Storage nine out of ten.

We use Azure Block Storage in two different use cases. In one case, we use it as a staging layer where the files are dumped. Then, within the release, we create and curate layers in different containers, where one container has the raw data and another standard container has the transformation-level data. The next layer is the curated layer, which we use in the views to expose the data to downstream systems like PowerBI or Tableau.

RBAC, access control, soft delete, hard delete, and cool and hot storage tiers are some of the features I have found valuable in Azure Block storage. Basically, if the file is greater than six months, it will get deleted automatically, regardless of whether it's present or not. These features have indirectly helped us to save on storage costs.

The feature that requires improvement is the hierarchical naming step. Enabling this step could provide access to certain features that are currently missing.

Another area for improvement in Microsoft Azure Block Storage is the cache feature. So whenever we upload a file to block storage and then download it to check whether it was uploaded successfully or not, it downloads the older file due to caching. But when we directly download the file without clicking on the preview options, it shows the correct file. The cache issue needs to be addressed to ensure that the correct file is downloaded, especially when it's done manually into the local storage. Because I have checked in other services as well, and the issue only arises when we download it manually into the local storage.

I've been working with Microsoft Azure Block Storage for three years now.

I would rate the stability a nine out of ten because downtime is very rare, and the backup and redundancy features are strong. So its stability is very fine.

I would rate the scalability a nine out of ten. We have 150+ users because we have RBAC, and I can only see my teammates. But I can see 50+ and could be more.

It's not just one team, but multiple teams across five to six blocks who use it according to their process.

It was mostly handled by our company's Microsoft gold partner, who received seamless support from Microsoft whenever we needed help with any settings that our team couldn't figure out. I'm not sure about other organizations, but since we were a gold partner, support was always available to us.

I found the configuration of Amazon complex compared to Azure, and the cost of Amazon is higher. The documentation is slightly better in Azure. 

The initial setup is easy. There won’t be any hiccups. Even a beginner who is interested in learning the cloud will have any issues setting it up.

I would say the price is low. When I compare it to its competitors like Ebik, Azure's price is lower.

I would give it an eight out of ten.

Overall, I would rate it a nine out of ten.

Block Storage can be used for storing files of varying formats. It can be used as an object storage as well, so people can dump a variety of files into it. It's called a storage account, actually. This storage account can be used to store any application-specific files and there could be different Azure services which can consume the files, like that storage account, as part of the architecture. There could be an application storing the data, and there could be some other service that picks those files up from there. This solution is part of that entire architecture. It's kind of similar to a history you have in a website. It is almost exactly the same as that.

It has capabilities such as versioning and, from a security point of view, you can also back it up. It has resiliency features as well.

You can have GRS, like a during and end storage feature, enabled so that it can be replicated to a secondary region in Azure. This can prevent an outage in the primary region. 

There is a drawback or limitation to the GRS storage feature because depending on the amount of data, it could take a lot of time. There are a lot of steps from the application perspective, so it's not easy and straightforward from a business continuity perspective. That is one of the limitations I see in the solution. 

It's about the time it takes to revert back. The failover takes a couple of minutes but then it takes a lot of time to fail it back to the primary region again, so you have to do a synchronization again. That's a bit of a challenge because if it contains a lot of data in terabytes, the cost to do a replication again but reverse the direction from secondary to primary is a bit extra. Obviously, though, this only happens when there is an out, when a DR is involved, so it's not very often that companies would come across this. It's only in the worst case scenario. 

It's not a big thing, but some companies have limited time for their DR, like there's a RPO, or a recovery point objective and recovery time objective, that is very short. In that case, this product may not be suitable or may not meet their customer's requirements. That is something that Microsoft should focus on, to bring the time down or make that process, the DR process, a bit easier for this product. Maybe as they continually improve this product they can add improvements in this aspect to reduce that DR time, recovery time, for the solution.

I have been working with this product for about four or five years.

I have seen this solution be pretty stable. I've never had an issue with it. I'd rate the stability as a five out of five. 

It's very scalable. It has really high limits, so I don't think most customers will hit that limit. I'll give it a five out of five for scalability. 

Big enterprises as well as medium enterprises use this solution, and even smaller enterprises. There are organizations with 100 users, 1000, and even some with 5000 and above. There could be only applications consuming this, or end users also, but the end users directly connecting to the solution are a lot less.

It's mostly the developers who configure the application to use this solution as the object storage. Eventually, the end users of the application could be in the 1000s, and they utilize this back end solution via the application, so it is getting utilized by the end users, but it's via the application.

There was one issue I had with the backup. I didn't get a proper response and it took a couple of days for the response. It turned out to be a restriction and limitation, so it didn't get solved, but I was told that it was a limitation. I would rate the technical support as a three out of five.

The solution can be deployed manually from the Azure portal, or it can be done programmatically, via code. The setup is very easy and straightforward. It only takes a few minutes. I rate it a five out of five. 

I have deployed this solution for customers, and just one person is required for deployment. Anybody who has knowledge of Azure and has some administrative experience in Azure can do this. It's a very straightforward solution to deploy.

There is hardly any configuration in this solution, so it's maybe a day's task to deploy, but not beyond that. Once the design for this product is confirmed and completed, then the deployment is just following those design inputs which have been already signed off on by the customer. Customer requirements and specific features that need to be enabled in this tool need to be finalized first, which happens in the design phase. Once all of that is finalized, deploying it with the agreed configuration can be done in a day, max.

It's fairly cheap and it's also fully managed by Microsoft, so you don't have to manage the storage as much.

The solution is pay as you go, so it depends on the amount of data that is stored and the transactions. There's no licensing requirements. Also, we can have a subscription, like reservations for the storage. If we have a lot of data, then that can help reduce the cost, at least to some extent. The technical support is part of the support plan. 

The price depends on each customer. If they use a lot of data, the cost can be very high. I think it would be the same case with other tools as well, though, so it is quite affordable. 

The solution has life-cycle management, versioning, and a lot of protection features like sub-delete and all of that. It's pretty much complete, so it satisfies most of my customers' needs and requirements. I recommend this product because it is straightforward and well-documented.

I would rate the solution as an eight out of ten.