SoftNAS Reduces Storage Costs Using Azure Blob Storage While Increasing Scale and Security
A core benefit of using cloud storage is getting the data center hardware monkey off your back and getting elastic capacity. A challenge of using new cloud paradigm storage mechanisms such as object storage may result in re-engineering applications customers have spent a lot of time and money cultivating. In Azure, the scalable object storage offering comes via Blob Storage offered in both Hot (frequently used data) and Cool (less frequently used data) storage tiers. So, how can you get the benefit of elastic capacity and cost point options and still use the NFS, CIFS/SMB, iSCSI, and AFP file-sharing protocols that Blob Storage doesn’t provide?
As we continue our efforts to expand Microsoft Azure’s storage capabilities, we’re introducing exciting new features to make Microsoft Azure Blob Storage even easier to use. With the upcoming release of SoftNAS, customers will be able to frontend the Blob Storage provided by Azure with NFS, CIFS/SMB, iSCSI, and AFP file sharing protocols. See the video below for a sneak peek of how SoftNAS frontends Azure Blob Storage.
Using SoftNAS to frontend Blob Storage has a number of advantages including:
- Highly Scalable: Customers can scale cloud NAS deployment from Gigabytes to Petabytes, supporting up to 16PB
- No Application Re-coding: SoftNAS allows easy workload migrations to the Azure cloud without changing existing application code, data structures or workflows.
- Improved Flexibility: Customers can create SoftNAS volumes using the Blob Storage tiers with the right mix of price and performance that best meets their needs.
Customers can also leverage support for the Hot and Cool Storage tiers for Blob storage with:
- Azure Cool Blob Storage – Object storage that allows economical safe-keeping of less frequently accessed data.
- Azure Hot Blob Storage – Object storage that optimizes frequently accessed stored data to enable continuous IO.
- Azure General Purpose Storage and Azure Premium Storage – For higher performance workloads.
As the capabilities of SoftNAS on Azure continue to grow, we’re excited to show you more of our upcoming features.
