SoftNAS Azure backend storage selection guide

SoftNAS NAS supports the broadest range of backend storage options on Microsoft Azure, including Azure Disk Storage, Blob Storage and Premium Block Storage. It’s important to select the right backend storage to align with the performance requirements of your application.

What is Azure Disk Storage?

Azure Disk storage is durable, highly available and secure storage for virtual machines. There are two main types of Azure Disk Storage.

Standard Disk Storage

For testing, consider Standard Disk storage (HDD) to keep costs down, as you scale up and down quickly.

Premium Disk Storage:

Choose Premium Disk storage (SSD) for I/O-intensive applications, where low latency and high throughput are critical.

What is Azure Blob Storage?

Azure Blob Storage is cost-effective, scalable object storage. Azure Blob storage is offered in hot and cool tiers, depending on how often data access is needed.

Hot Blob Tier

For Blob Storage that is more frequently accessed

Cool Blob Tier

Less active Blob Storage that needs to be less frequently accessed

Step 2:

Choose Between Disk, Blob or Premium Block Storage

Azure Blob storage is usually chosen for applications that do not require high IOPS. However, with SoftNAS® ObjectBacker™ Backend Storage Acceleration with patent-pending ObjFast™ adaptive flow technology, SoftNAS Cloud NAS can write data up to 400% faster than before, making cost-effective object storage a viable option for write intensive use cases that want to take advantage of lower cost Azure Blob storage.