Boost your client performance with Azure Files SMB Multichannel

Lower your deployment cost, while improving client performance with Server Message Block (SMB) Multichannel on premium tier.

Today, we are announcing the preview of Azure Files SMB Multichannel on premium tier. SMB 3.0 introduced the SMB Multichannel technology in Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8 client. This feature allows SMB 3.x clients to establish multiple network connections to SMB 3.x servers for greater performance over multiple network adapters and over network adapter with Receive Side Scaling (RSS) enabled. With this preview release, Azure Files SMB clients can now take advantage of SMB Multichannel technology with premium file shares in the cloud.

Benefits

SMB Multichannel allows multiple connections over the optimum network path that allows for increased performance from parallel processing. The increased performance is achieved by bandwidth aggregation over multiple NICs or with NIC support for Receive Sides Scaling (RSS) that enables distributed IOs across multiple CPUs and dynamic load balance.

Benefits of Azure Files SMB Multichannel include:

◉ Higher throughput: Makes this feature suitable for applications with large files with large IOs such as media & entertainment for content creation/transcoding, genomics, and financial services risk analysis.

◉ Increased IOPS: This is particularly useful for small IO scenarios such as database applications.

◉ Network fault tolerance: Multiple connections mitigate the risk of disruption despite the loss of a network connection.

◉ Automatic configuration: Dynamic discovery and creation of multiple network paths.

◉ Cost optimization: Achieve higher scale from a single virtual machine (VM) client by utilizing full VM limits. To reach Azure Files premium bandwidth and IOPS scale, applications now require fewer VM clients to achieve the required scale.

Below is a sample test result that demonstrates the performance improvements of up to three times with SMB Multichannel feature enabled.

The above sample test results are based on internal testing performed by generating random IO load with a single virtual machine client (Standard_D32s_v3 with a single RSS enabled NIC) connected to a premium file share. Diskspd tool was used to generate load against ten files with 64 queue depth to simulate multiple threaded workload patterns against multiple files in a share. The IOPS results are based on 4 KiB read and write IO sizes, while throughput test is based on 512 KiB read and write IO sizes to optimize for the performance. A larger percentage gain was observed in write throughput versus read throughput.

Pricing and availability

SMB Multichannel for Azure Files premium storage accounts come at zero additional cost. In addition, as part of our continued commitment to provide the most cost-effective file storage for your workloads, we recently announced a more than 33 percent price reduction on Azure Files premium tier.

Currently, SMB Multichannel preview on premium shares is available in limited regions for Windows SMB 3.x clients. We are quickly expanding the coverage to all Azure regions with premium tier. Stay up to date on region availability for SMB Multichannel by visiting the Azure Files documentation.

Getting started

Learn more about feature capability and SMB Multichannel performance in the Azure Files documentation. To get started, you will need to register your subscription for SMB Multichannel feature preview. Once the registration is complete, you can enable or disable SMB Multichannel on premium storage accounts (FileStorage) in one of the supported regions with a click of a button.

Source: microsoft.com

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Announcing the general availability of larger, more powerful standard file shares for Azure Files

Better scale and more power for IT professionals and developers!

We're excited to announce the general availability of larger, more powerful standard file shares for Azure Files. Azure Files is a secure, fully managed public cloud file storage with full range of data redundancy options and hybrid capabilities using Azure File Sync.

Here is a quick look at some of the improvements in the Azure Files standard file shares' capacity and performance.

With the release of large file shares, a single standard file share in a general purpose account can now support up to 100 TiB capacity, 10K IOPS, and 300 MiB/s throughput. All premium file shares in Azure FileStorage accounts currently support large file shares by default. If your workload is latency sensitive and requires a higher level of performance, you should consider Azure Files premium tier. 

What’s new?

Since the preview of large file shares, we have been working on making the Azure Files experience even better. Large file shares now has:

◈ Ability to upgrade existing general purpose storage accounts and existing file shares.

◈ Ability to opt in for larger files shares at a storage account instead of subscription level.

◈ Expanded regional coverage.

◈ Support for both locally redundant and zonal redundant storages.

◈ Improvements in the performance and scale of sync to work better with larger file shares. Visit Azure File Sync scalability targets to keep informed of the latest scale.

Pricing and availability

The increased capacity and scale of standard file shares on your general purpose accounts come at zero additional cost.

Currently, standard large file shares support is available for locally redundant and zone redundant storages and available in 13 regions worldwide. We are quickly expanding the coverage to all Azure regions. Stay up to date on region availability by visiting Azure Files documentation.

Getting started

You no longer need to register your subscription for the large file shares feature.

New storage account

Create a new general purpose storage account in one of the supported regions on a supported redundancy option. While creating storage account, go to Advanced tab and enable Large file shares feature. See detailed steps on how to enable large file shares support on a new storage account. All new shares created under this new account will, by default, have 100 TiB capacity with increased scale.

Existing storage account

On an existing general purpose storage account that resides on one of the supported regions, go to Configuration, enable Large file shares feature, and hit Save. You can now update quota for existing shares under this upgraded account to more than 5 TiB. All new shares created under this upgraded account will, by default, have 100 TiB capacity with increased scale.

Opting in your storage accounts into large file shares feature does not cause any disruption to your existing workloads, including Azure File Sync. Once opted in, you cannot disable the large files shares feature on your account.

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Announcing Azure Files share snapshots public preview

Azure Files offers fully managed cloud file shares, and extends the ability of organizations to share files across on-premises and the cloud. With support for industry standard SMB protocol, this service is truly cross-platform and can support mounting as file share from any client that implements SMB 3.0 with encryption. Some examples are Windows, Mac, and Linux. In addition to native mount, it exposes REST APIs for programmability. With Azure Files, organizations get the added benefit of a storage infrastructure that is highly secure, massively scalable, and globally available. Even with all of these capabilities, what would you do if a user or application accidentally deletes or corrupts files or folders that are stored in Azure Files share?

Today, we are very excited to introduce the public preview of Azure Files share snapshots. Azure Files share snapshots allows you to periodically store read-only versions of your file shares. It also allows you to copy an older version of your content from anywhere for further modification and use.

When a share snapshot is created, the contents of the file share and the share snapshot are exactly the same. However, only the incremental changes are written to the snapshot. This makes snapshot creation faster, space-efficient, and cost-effective.

On Windows, you can leverage the familiar Previous Versions functionality, as shown below in Figure 1, where sharesnapshotdefs is a mounted Azure file share and each entry in the Previous Versions tab is a share snapshot. You can browse the content of the snapshot, right there in your explorer, by selecting “Open” or by copying the contents of that share snapshot back to its original location by selecting “Restore”. The same Previous Versions experience is available for individual directories or files. This means that while snapshots are taken at the share level, data retrieval can be done at both the file share and individual directory/file level.

Figure 1: Azure Files share snapshot experience on Windows – Integrated with “Previous Versions”

On Linux, you can use Azure CLI 2.0 for Azure Files, as shown below in Figure 2. All the same capabilities, including creation of snapshots, are available in Azure CLI 2.0.

Figure 2: Azure Files share snapshot experience on Azure CLI – List Snapshots

In addition to Azure CLI 2.0, snapshots are fully supported by REST and client libraries such as .Net and Python programmatic access. Also, PowerShell support is coming soon. To quickly get started, you can go directly to the Azure Portal today and start creating snapshot.

Figure 3: Azure Files share snapshot experience on Azure Portal

And what more - During our public preview, capacity consumed by snapshots will not be charged!

Azure Files share snapshots will be a key addition to your cloud storage management toolkit. To learn more about snapshots, please visit our documentation.

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