Microsoft Ignite 2023: What is new for Enterprise File Shares?

We are announcing various new capabilities for Azure Files and Azure NetApp Files to continue to improve file share experiences for enterprise workloads. You can now enjoy more flexibility, security, and performance for your data storage needs. Some of these capabilities are available as preview, some as general availability (GA), as indicated below.

Scale and performance

• Faster metadata operations with Azure Files (Preview): You can now leverage reduced metadata latency by 30-40%, varying with the IO patterns. Since each metadata transaction executes faster, this typically leads to more IOPS and throughput from each SMB client, up to 60%. To opt-in to limited preview and leverage faster metadata operations with Azure Files, learn more.
• Coming soon: Larger and faster volumes with Azure NetApp Files (GA): You can now, in preview, create volumes of up to 500TiB in size, with increased performance for read, write, and metadata operations. This is ideal for workloads that require larger volumes with a single namespace, such as HPC in the EDA and O&G space. General availability will be announced early 2024. (Learn more)

   

Resiliency

• SMB continuous availability with Azure NetApp Files (GA): For SMB volumes, you can enable Continuous Availability for transparent failover. This is for volumes used by Citrix App Layering, FSLogix user profile containers and Microsoft SQL Server on Microsoft Windows Server. With this capability, you can improve reliability and user experience during storage service maintenance operations. (Learn more)
• Coming soon: Cross-zone replication with Azure NetApp Files (GA): You can replicate your volumes asynchronously from one availability zone to another in the same region, leveraging NetApp SnapMirror® technology. This can help you protect your data from unforeseeable zone failures, with minimal data transfer and replication time. Cross-zone replication doesn’t involve any network transfer costs, making it highly cost-effective. General availability will be announced early 2024. (Learn more)
• Coming soon: Geo-redundancy for large file shares on the standard tiers with Azure Files (GA): You can now enable geo-redundancy and large file shares (up to 100TiB capacity) on the same storage account to significantly increase your standard file share capacity and performance limits while benefiting from geo-redundancy. This is available in preview, and GA will be announced early 2024. (Learn more)
• Coming soon: NFS snapshots with Azure Files (GA): You can now, in preview, protect your data from corruption or accidental deletion with file share snapshots. Snapshots capture the share state at a point in time, are immutable, and are differential to save costs. General availability will be announced early 2024. (Learn more)

Security

• Coming soon: Customer-managed keys for encryption at rest with Azure NetApp Files (GA): You can now, in preview, use Azure Key Vault to store and manage your own encryption keys for data at rest, adding an extra layer of security for your data. General availability will be announced early 2024. (Learn more)
• Coming soon: Double encryption at-rest with Azure NetApp Files (GA): You can now, in preview, enable multiple independent encryption layers for your data at rest, reducing the risk of data breaches due to compromised keys, encryption errors, or algorithm flaws. General availability will be announced early 2024. (Learn more)

Cost Optimization

• Standard storage with cool access with Azure NetApp Files (Preview): You can now configure a standard capacity pool with cool access. Cool access moves cold (infrequently accessed) data transparently to a managed Azure storage account to reduce costs (Learn more).
• User and group quotas with Azure NetApp Files (GA): You can now restrict the storage space that a user or group can use within a specific volume, for both NFS and SMB protocols. This can help you control costs and prevent overconsumption of resources. (Learn more)

Additional resources:

• Breakout: What's new and what's next with Azure IaaS
• Learn more about the latest Azure Files capabilities: https://aka.ms/whatsnewazurefiles
• Learn more about the latest Azure NetApp Files capabilities: https://aka.ms/HelloANF