Microsoft Azure Block Storage Reviews

We are using Microsoft Azure Block Storage to accumulate and store all unstructured data, that is, different files such as Excel, Word, PowerPoint, or any other streaming or video files. Whenever there is any unstructured data, you can use the Microsoft Azure Block Storage to deal with it.

It has easy versioning. The versioning is amenable to any changes. 

It also has great security. It can only be accessed through an API, and only the requested users can access it. It is optimized for data lakes and comprehensive data management.

We need to do versioning each and every time, that is, check-in and check-out. If a person forgets to do that, then there could be an issue in the replacement of that particular object in the storage. It will be great if it can be automatically managed.

I have been using this solution for the last two to three years. 

There are absolutely no issues. They're really great at stability. 

It has great scalability.

It is quite straightforward. You can set it up even when you don't know much about it. You log into Azure.com, which is free for one year, and take a virtual machine and storage and then run your own website through Microsoft Azure Block Storage. You can store your image files, videos, and other document files from there. It is very easy. Oracle Cloud and AWS also provide the same ease of use, not only Azure.

In terms of pricing, Azure is quite cheaper than AWS. However, I have recently read that Oracle Cloud Generation 2 storage is quite cheaper than Azure. I haven't used it yet. 

We need to look at a customer's requirements, and, based on that, we can suggest the storage. You can save at least 20% with Azure as compared to AWS, which is quite costly.

I have worked on similar solutions from Oracle and Amazon. Feature-wise, they all provide the same features. However, I found Azure more convenient to work on than other solutions. It is very easy to use for data analytics purposes as well as for storing the archive data or long-term use data, that is, non-relational and unstructured data.

I would rate Microsoft Azure Block Storage a ten out of ten. It is really good.

Our primary use case is for the creation of a data lake, which was looking at unstructured predominantly in big data storage, it is looking at an economical solution. This was then used in conjunction with an SAP BW solution pulling and using SAP data hub to thencreate a single ecosystem of data.

The data lake is invaluable. We also use Microsoft SQL in terms of structuring the data and getting into a position where it could be useful to support reporting. We use Databricks for data science. We incorporated Databricks with that as well.

In terms of improvement, it could use better integration with non-propriety tools. Azure pushes you down a data factory road for integrations but data factory isn't always a scalable, viable solution, particularly when using large numbers ofconnections to IoT solutions. 

I have been using Microsoft Azure Block Storage for around a year. 

We don't have any issues with stability. 

I haven't needed to contact customer support. 

The initial setup was smooth and straightforward. The deployment took very little time. The main time frame taken was on the SAP side. We put SAP on the Azure cloud which took some time. 

I would rate it an eight out of ten. 

Think about your file structure to make sure you get it right. Management of the business is important because if the business starts pushing data into it in can turn into a data swamp.

We are creating VMs for some of our development testing, and we are using Azure Block Storage in that context. We are not using anything from Azure for production systems. We are just using it for staging and development.

Azure Block Storage is

• easy to deploy
• easy to scale up
• pay-as-you-go. 

So whenever we need something, we use it.

One of the biggest challenges on Azure infrastructure is that sometimes we don't get what we want. Either we have to wait for it or contact support because something is not working for us. Most of the time it works fine. But sometimes, when we want something critical, apart from block storage — we want to increase the capacity of the VM or we want to increase the cores of the VM — we have to wait. We get a response from Microsoft from a North American location. We want to host everything within the UAE. But we are redirected through North America or Europe. That is a challenge with Azure. It's the system availability that is the difficult point.

Also, billing is an issue. We have had a lot of problems when it comes to billing. We started working with minimal resources and we opted for pay-as-you-go mode. Microsoft needs to invest in some resources to improve the billing part. It's not about the money, but the visibility. I see a lot of invoices, but I don't see whether we have paid them or not. And if we have paid, I don't see when it was paid and through which credit card or account we paid. I see invoices, but I don't see the information related to those invoices.

I have been using Azure Block Storage for less than a year.

Availability is sometimes an issue.

Technical support, overall, is good. The response is very good. We don't have any issue with that.

We have our own data center and we use its storage system. But we want to upgrade that because it's not fulfilling our current requirements and we don't see it fulfilling our future requirements either. We have a need to upgrade our system.

Initially, we had some issues but we were not trained. We were used to the legacy environment, so we had challenges. But anyone who has technical knowledge will be able to set it up and understand it, once they start reading about how to set it up and how to use it. 

There are a few challenges, especially when we are setting up block storage or setting up the network. There are complexities of the network environment, such as creating the virtual networks, etc. It's complex.

We started looking at Dell EMC and some other solutions such as QNAP. We are evaluating them.

We have our own team to maintain it. We are still trying to add more resources to the team and trying to find someone who Azure will certify.

I would recommend Azure Block Storage so far, per my current usage, but I would also highly recommend learning how it works and how to configure it properly. Block Storage, in particular, is a bit confusing. People who do not have proper knowledge should not try R&D with it. I would highly recommend getting professional support if you really want to use it. The solution is very good, but the configuration and initial implementation should be done by professionals.

We primarily use the solution for migration to restore data and to help us migrate to other systems. I do occasionally also use it as a backup, but not very often. Mostly, it's used for migration and we installed Microsoft on it. We store it in the cloud and migrate everything over.

The solution offers tiers of storage, depending on what we want to do. 

If I want to store my data for a very long period of time and I know that I'm going to archive it, I just do the archive.

You can easily access your data whenever you need it.

Uploading of data could be improved. Currently, the only way you can upload your data is by using their storage explorer. You need to use a command line to do that. Then, maybe you can go online and you can use their explorer to check to see if it's there. If they had a third-party application to handle the upload, it would be better. Many people aren't familiar with command lines for uploading data. It makes it more difficult for many users.

The pricing is a bit high.

I've been using the solution for a year or two.

The solution is very stable. I'd say it's 99.9% stable. Microsoft is very good.

I believe it is possible to scale the solution, although I haven't tried to yet personally.

It's been a long time since I've contacted technical support, but I did reach out once when I was having latency issues. I contacted them and they were able to resolve the issue. When you reach out to them for assistance, they call you immediately.

I didn't previously use a different solution. My email was hosted on Microsoft, so I moved to Azure.

The initial setup is straightforward. It's not very complicated. We handled the deployment in stages. It took, at maximum, just over a week.

We handled the implementation ourselves.

The pricing is pay-as-you-go, so it runs on credit. The more storage a company has, the more they pay. If you are putting data into an archive, it doesn't cost too much, but if you need to access it, the price may be a bit high.

I'm a Microsoft partner and I deploy the solution for other customers.

Currently, I'm the only user on the solution. I don't use it every day; I use it only when I need to.

The solution is quite good and is easy to integrate with other systems, You can also integrate it as a backup for your recordings.

It's also easily accessible and, because it's on the cloud, it doesn't matter where your current location is. It allows for easy replication of data on different levels. 

For these reasons, I'd recommend the product. I'd rate the solution seven out of ten. It's a bit expensive. If it was more reasonably priced I'd rate it higher.

Our customers basically use this program for virtual data center extension, as a hybrid extension of their local or on-prem or private data center. It offers them an automated way of running new workloads or creating new workloads with governance on it.

The reason why people choose this solution is that it has a good infrastructure. It also offers an easy way to provide workloads. We mainly use this solution for the development, testing, and production of our data and infrastructure in a standardized way. I also like the fact that the deployment is fast.

I would like to see an improvement in the networking and cost transparency part. What I mean by this, is that we provide certain workflows for our customers and we usually calculate what is local, but even then it's not really upfront. We must know what the usage will be in DMs. So the price is different, and that is where provisioning and cost transparency comes in. We must know what it will cost in the OPEX work that we do. We do have some cost analysis, overdose cloud, but still, it's not always the right amount that's reflected for our customers for each application or each analysis that they want to do. The invoice type is therefore different for each client.

The company I work for has been using Microsoft Azure Block Storage for two to three years and I've been using it for almost a year now.

Most customers are happy with the stability. Some bigger customers, however, have experienced problems with the stability of the Azure cloud. 

One can easily scale with this program so I am satisfied with the scalability. 

I haven't used customer service before.

Our setup is rather complex. It is easier for our customers - they simply get the tenants in our products and within the tenants, we just plug in all the drivers on-prem and then he gets a complete insight of the overall workload. 

I am, however, not involved in the installation. Another difficult thing is to create a good architecture that's strong on networking and that will enable customers to deploy or provide all those different environments in an easy way. So the thinking is critical, and architecture is very important, which is kind of complex. 

Deployment takes between two to five days, depending on the customer and the speed on the cloud.

We have a power desk with three people who are responsible for support and maintenance, customer queries, etc. 

The solution is affordable and we only pay for what we use. There are additional costs for backup and disaster management and we use separate products as service providers.

I personally feel that this is a good program. My advice to others is that they should determine beforehand what they want to use it for. The biggest lesson I've learned so far is that, if you go to the backup part, you have to be careful about how you do the backups and what the retention times are. 

I would like to see improved file sharing and better security in the next release. 

On a scale from one to ten, I will rate this program an eight. 

We primarily use the solution for backup and replication.

The solution's most valuable features are its usability, scalability, and management, which is really easy. It is not a heavy product either. 

The biggest problem with Azure is the price. It's cost too high.

Technical support needs improvement.

The scalability of the solution is good.

Technical support is not really excellent. It's not easy to speak with the right level of engineer directly. We need to wait for a first level and then wait again to be moved to a higher level. The tiered system they use slows down the responsiveness.

Above licensing, Azure does have extra costs, which makes the solution rather pricey.

We use the cloud deployment model.

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten.

We use Microsoft Azure Block Storage to store data.

The solution has introduced cool-tier storage that allows us to store and save data. Since the solution has a hierarchical namespace format, getting data from my database is very fast.

We cannot properly check the daily cost in the Azure portal. I'm going to raise a ticket to the Microsoft team as it is an Azure portal problem.

I have been using Microsoft Azure Block Storage for 1.5 years.

The technical support team assigns engineers too late, and the engineers don't provide a proper solution. They transfer the case to another engineer without providing a proper summary to them. We have to explain the issue and do the basic troubleshooting once again.

Neutral

I would recommend the solution to other users. Overall, I rate the solution a 9 out of 10.

I primarily use Block Storage for migration purposes within the broader Azure ecosystem.

The product's most valuable feature is its capability for migrations. It allows for efficient data transfer without significant delays or complications.

The platform's technical support services could be enhanced. They could provide better resolution and improve the response time. 

I've been using Microsoft Azure Block Storage for approximately four years.

The product is stable. I have not encountered any issues, and it consistently performs well. I rate it a nine out of ten for stability.

The product scalability is excellent. It seamlessly supports vertical and horizontal scaling.

The technical support services need improvement in terms of response time. 

The initial setup was straightforward. Deploying takes just a few minutes and does not involve significant challenges.

The product's pricing is reasonable, but premium applications can be costly.

I evaluated other cloud providers like AWS and Google Cloud but chose Microsoft Azure due to its flexibility.

Block Storage is a robust solution for Azure data migration and storage requirements.

I rate it an eight out of ten.