Azure Storage Architecture Hub 💽☁️

Microsoft Azure provides a comprehensive enterprise storage portfolio categorized into Object & Data Lake Storage, Shared File Systems, and Hypervisor Block Storage.

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Architectural Decision Matrix

                                  Storage Requirement
                                           │
            ┌──────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────┐
            ▼                              ▼                              ▼
    Object & Big Data             Shared Network File             Dedicated Block Storage
            │                              │                              │
    [[Azure/storage/blob|Azure Blob Storage]]          ┌───────┴───────┐              ┌───────┴───────┐
    - Standard Object Store         ▼               ▼              ▼               ▼
    - ADLS Gen2 (HNS)          [[Azure/storage/files-netapp|Azure Files]]   [[Azure/storage/files-netapp|Azure NetApp]] [[Azure/storage/disks-elastic-san|Managed Disks]]  [[Azure/storage/disks-elastic-san|Elastic SAN]]
    - Cold / Archive Tiers     - Cloud SMB/NFS - Sub-ms Bare Metal - VM Attached   - Multi-host iSCSI
                               - FSLogix       - SAP HANA / Oracle - Premium v2    - Shared Cluster

Storage Capabilities Matrix

Service	Protocol / Access	Redundancy Options	Max Capacity	Primary Fit
Azure Blob Storage & ADLS Gen2	REST, SDKs, HDFS (ABFS), SFTP	LRS, ZRS, GRS, GZRS	Exabytes (5 PiB per account)	Unstructured object storage, static websites, big data analytics (Databricks/Synapse), archival.
Azure Files	SMB 2.1–3.1.1, NFSv4.1	LRS, ZRS, GRS, GZRS	100 TiB per share	Windows user profiles (FSLogix), legacy file server lift-and-shift, multi-pod container RWX shares.
Azure NetApp Files (ANF)	NFSv3, NFSv4.1, SMB 3.x, Dual-Protocol	LRS, ZRS, Cross-Region Replication	100 TiB per volume (540 TiB pool)	Sub-millisecond latency databases (SAP HANA, Oracle), high-performance computing (HPC), EDA.
Azure Managed Disks	Direct Hypervisor VHDX	LRS, ZRS	64 TiB per disk	VM OS boot disks, transaction logs, databases needing dedicated IOPS (Premium SSD v2, Ultra Disk).
Azure Elastic SAN	iSCSI Target	LRS, ZRS	Up to 2,000,000 IOPS / 80,000 MB/s	Storage consolidation for VM fleets, Azure VMware Solution (AVS) datastores, SCSI-3 clustering.

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Service Catalog

• Azure Blob Storage & Data Lake Storage Gen2 (ADLS) — Blob redundancy models (LRS, ZRS, GRS, GZRS), Access Tiers (Hot, Cool, Cold, Archive), ADLS Gen2 Hierarchical Namespace (HNS), User Delegation SAS, and Lifecycle Management.
• Azure Files & Azure NetApp Files (ANF) — Cloud-native SMB 3.1.1 and NFSv4.1 shares vs bare-metal NetApp ONTAP infrastructure, sub-millisecond latencies, FSLogix user profiles, and SAP HANA storage.
• Azure Managed Disks & Elastic SAN Architecture — Standard HDD, Standard SSD, Premium SSD v1, Premium SSD v2 (independent IOPS/throughput), Ultra Disks, SCSI-3 Shared Disks, and cloud-native iSCSI SAN.

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Multi-Cloud Equivalents

Capability	Microsoft Azure	Amazon Web Services (AWS)	Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
Object Storage	Azure Blob Storage	Amazon S3	Cloud Storage (GCS)
Data Lake Engine	ADLS Gen2 (Hierarchical)	AWS Lake Formation / S3	Cloud Storage (GCS with Dataplex)
Managed File Shares	Azure Files	Amazon EFS / FSx for Windows	Cloud Filestore
High-Performance NAS	Azure NetApp Files	Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP	Google Cloud NetApp Volumes
Block Storage (VM)	Azure Managed Disks	Amazon EBS	Persistent Disk / Hyperdisk
Clustered SAN	Azure Elastic SAN	Amazon FSx / EBS Multi-Attach	Hyperdisk Storage Pools