Azure File Service: Expectations vs. Reality on the Public Cloud | SNIA

Abstract

For the past two years Microsoft Azure has provided a completely managed SMB3 file server in the cloud. Leveraging the Continuous Availability features of SMB3, the customer experience is an always available and reliable file share. However, the occasional gaps between customer expectations and the reality of a massive scale public cloud have been illuminating.

This talk will present the architecture of Azure Files, which is based on Azure tables and blobs under the hood, not a conventional file system – let alone NTFS. Specific attention will be paid to those aspects that provide the seamless availability and reliability in spite of the platform underneath it continuously changing.

Finally observations from customer issues will be presented that brightly illuminate where more work is needed.