At its virtual Build conference in May, Microsoft announced that its Azure NetApp Files service had reached 99.99% availability. With regards to more recent news on its cloud storage space, the firm unveiled general availability for the shared disks capability earlier this month.
Today, Microsoft has made a public preview of Network File System (NFS) 3.0 support available for Azure Blob storage. For those unaware of NFS, the protocol enables client computers to access files over a network in a similar manner to which local storage would be accessed.
As far as Blob storage is concerned, Microsoft introduced support for the capability to enable firms to migrate data to the cloud storage solution while limiting the complications introduced through data silos. Some customers are also noted to have requested the feature to allow for the reusing of code from on-premise solutions to access files.
More specifically, the tech giant has described the following use cases in which NFS 3.0 support should prove to be useful:
NFS 3.0 support for Azure Blob storage helps with large scale read-heavy sequential access workloads where data will be ingested once and minimally modified further including large scale analytic data, backup and archive, NFS apps for seismic and subsurface processing, media rendering, genomic sequencing, and line-of-business applications.
For now, the preview is available only to BlockBlobStorage type accounts with premium tier performance in the U.S. East, U.S. Central, and Canada Central regions. GPV2 accounts with standard performance will also be getting support for the new protocol soon, though no particular timeline for the rollout has been specified.
With regards to pricing, test data in NFS 3.0-enabled accounts will be charged the same capacity rates that apply for Blob storage per GB/month. Pricing for transactions will be detailed further when the feature reaches GA. You can learn more about NFS 3.0 in Azure Blob storage here, and provide suggestions for future improvements by emailing Microsoft at azurenfspreview@microsoft.com.
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