Azure File Sync vs. Veritas Alta™ SaaS Protection – or both?

Azure File Sync (AFS) was first announced at Microsoft Ignite 2017. At Veritas, we get questions about AFS sometimes. Some people want to use it with Veritas Alta™ SaaS Protection. For others, it’s a choice of Veritas Alta SaaS Protection or AFS.

In this post, we provide insights to help you differentiate between Azure File Sync and Veritas Alta SaaS Protection, and how you can optionally combine the two solutions as part of your storage transformation strategy.

What is Azure File Sync?

Azure File Sync (AFS) is an easy way to integrate multiple Windows Servers into a global namespace. In other words, you can have multiple instances of Windows Servers synchronizing their data and permissions to Azure File Services in the cloud. This provides a common file server with synchronized directory structure, permissions, and data for a distributed workgroup.

Setting up AFS is incredibly simple. The first step is to create and configure a Sync Group in Azure. Next, you need to enroll one or more Windows Server instances into the Sync Group. The enrolment process includes running an installer on the Windows Server host machine to deploy the Microsoft sync engine software and filter-driver component.

Global Namespace for Workgroups

The global file share concept is particularly useful for remote and branch office scenarios.

At the time of launch, Azure File Sync only supported five (5) Windows Server instances in a sync group. As everyone expected, Microsoft has increased this number significantly since then.

The sync engine initially did not include the concept of global file locking. Since then it’s been a feature warmly welcomed by AFS customers.

The Cloud Storage Tiering Advantage

In addition to providing a global namespace, the filter-driver component of Azure File Sync performs seamless storage tiering. Original files can be converted to offline files with reparse points that support intercepting file open requests.

This method of storage tiering is handy because any user or application will continue to see tiered files as if they are local, and they can open and interact with files as normal.

Since the data must exist in the cloud to sync across all the Windows Servers in the Sync Group, it makes sense to virtualize the older data because it isn’t being accessed. The result is a lean and mean on-premises Windows Server and significantly less load on the network connection – the sync engine creates the older data on-premises as offline files as opposed to downloading all files to all Windows Servers.

How Pricing Works

AFS uses Azure Files storage in Azure. As usual, prices can vary depending on the Azure region you use, but in general Azure File Storage is $0.16 GiB per month for the Premium tier, $0.06 per GiB per month for the Hot tier and $0.015 per GiB per month on the Cool tier. If you opt for Geo-Redundant Storage (GRS), Azure Files pricing is approximately double,  before adding the $0.02 per GiB replication bandwidth cost.

Azure Files Storage uses Gibibytes rather then gigabytes to measure storage capacity.

Gibibytes (GiB) differ from gigabytes. Gigabytes are 1,000 megabytes (MB) which are 1,000 kilobytes (KB), where a kilobyte is 1,000 bytes.

Gibibytes, on the other hand are based on a kibibyte (KiB) being 1,024 bytes, a mebibyte (MiB) being 1,024 kibibytes (1,048,576 bytes), and a gibibyte (GiB) being 1,024 mebibytes (1,073,741,824 bytes).

While monthly per gibibyte storage costs are going to be the major cost component of AFS, they are certainly not the only cost factor. As with most cloud infrastructure, there are multiple cost variables at play. The total cost of AFS is determined by the following variables:

1. The number of servers that connect to the Azure Files cloud costs – $5 per month for each enrolled server.

1. The underlying costs of Azure File storage, which include:

• Monthly storage costs per gibibyte ,($0.06 to $0.10 depending on replication level – assuming use of the transaction-optimized tier).

• Storage operations costs – these vary depending on region and replication level, but you have tiny costs associated with write, list, and read operations ($0.015 to $0.03 per 10,000 operations).

1. Outbound data transfer – Egress bandwidth costs per gigabyte vary depending on the region hosting your Azure Files storage, anywhere from $0.0875 to $0.181 per GB per month (beyond the first 100GB. There are also built-in volume discounts (the more you download the cost per GB rate reduces).

Finally, if you want to back up your data in the cloud, with Azure Files you could implement a do-it-yourself approach with AzCopy or PowerShell. You’ll be able to keep a second copy in a second storage account. Obviously, the storage and storage operations costs (and egress bandwidth if the secondary account is in another region) should be factored into your cost model, likely doubling your costs.

Azure File Sync vs. Veritas’ Cloud Data Management Platform

Azure File Sync competes more with cloud storage gateway solutions such as Nasuni or Panzura. Compared to Veritas Alta SaaS Protection, AFS is more complementary than it is competitive. However, if you do use Veritas Alta SaaS Protection, the only reason you would use AFS is for the global namespace capability. As we will see, the Veritas solution does everything else and much more.

For a small business with just two or three terabytes, Azure File Sync is a great fit. Using AFS, a small business can easily cloud-enable their Windows Servers and, since their storage volumes are so low, not worry too much about the higher storage cost of Azure Files. For smaller organizations that already have a Windows Server storage infrastructure, AFS is particularly attractive compared to the prospect of acquiring and deploying new cloud storage gateway appliances that require a lift and shift. And compared to Veritas Alta SaaS Protection, it’s less expensive for such a small volume of data.

However, in scenarios where storage requirements exceed 20 TB, IT administrators will need to consider their options more closely.

The two largest problems you’ll find with AFS are the size limits of an Azure Files share and the high monthly cost per gibibyte rate of Azure Files. You can’t scale the cloud storage component and, even if you could (assuming the limits increase in the future), the economics of Azure Files is just not good for large-scale storage footprints.

The following chart provides a comparison of AFS to Veritas Alta SaaS Protection:

AFS is a hybrid cloud file collaboration solution that can enhance your storage management and backup strategies. However, due to many of its limitations and gaps, organizations with large data volumes and enterprise IT configurations are unlikely to adapt to it. At Veritas, we’d recommend using AFS as a convenient method for addressing the global namespace requirement and using Veritas Alta SaaS Protection to deal with the scalable storage backend and long-term retention aspects. Of course, if you aren’t concerned about the global file share capability, and you are dealing with large directories and long file names, and you want better storage economics in the cloud, then Veritas Alta SaaS Protection is all you need.

Why Azure File Sync Needs an Azure Archive Strategy

AFS, just like any collaboration solution, requires you to think about data management and archiving because aging data eventually clutters and burdens the workspace.

As you consider using AFS, we recommend planning your data management strategy in parallel, which will be driven by three factors:

• Cost management – moving older data from Azure Files storage to lower-cost Azure Blob Storage will reduce cloud storage spending. In the archive, Veritas Alta SaaS Protection’s storage analytics and policy engine make it easy to manage data between Hot, Cool, and Archive tiers for even more cost optimization. 
   

• Performance and efficiency – minimizing the file object count that the sync engine needs to manage will eventually become a priority in order to allow the sync engine to run more efficiently. 
   

• Data governance requirements — AFS uses Azure Files which is readily available storage for other services to run against the data. However, a proactive cloud data management strategy may be better for some clients. For instance, search and data classification features support fast discovery for legal and data privacy scenarios. Other features such as chargeback and the eventual deletion of content are turnkey with analytics, reporting, and policy controls. Features like WORM storage and litigation hold are also available with Veritas but not with AFS. 
   

Azure Files vs. Azure Blob Storage with Veritas 

As we touched on earlier, there is quite a spread in pricing between Azure Files and Azure Blob Storage. The pricing for Azure Files is well-suited for active data; whereas Azure Blob’s Cool and Archive tiers are nicely-suited for long-term retention of data that is low-touch.

Storage activity costs are often overlooked, and they can be significant with object counts into the hundreds of millions or billions of items. Storage access costs for Write, List, and Read operations is significantly lower in Azure Files than what we see with Azure Blob. is built on Azure and uses Azure Blob Storage for data.

Microsoft prices higher activity costs on the lower-cost storage tiers. A pricing structure like this means that you need to manage data intelligently to optimize your storage costs in the cloud. Analytics and a sophisticated rules engine allow you to place data on the appropriate tier at the best time.

Conclusion

So far, we have looked at the cool Azure File Sync from Microsoft. We think it is a great fit for many smaller organizations and low-data scenarios, and has helped drive adoption of the Azure cloud platform.

Unfortunately, for cloud storage gateway (CSG) vendors, AFS is another bite into their total addressable market and just another reason why it is a tough to be a CSG vendor these days.

Although Azure File Sync is a great solution for a cloud file share and global namespace, it simply doesn’t scale to meet enterprise requirements. The storage costs of Azure Files become prohibitive as your data volumes grow. For these reasons, we think AFS is either a small business play, or for enterprises to use alongside Veritas Alta SaaS Protection.

To learn more about Veritas Alta SaaS Protection, contact us today for a discussion or to schedule a demo!