Azure File Sync

Question

When the metrics for Azure File sync is sent every 15 minutes the minimum data transferred is 4.5GB.

There are sometimes only two files transferred and I still get 4.5> GB data sent.

The file server is 1TiB however it shows that over 2.1TiB of data has been sent in the last 7 days which does not make sense.

I would appreciate any help on this.

Answer 1

Hi @Michael Hulley ,

If you calculate data transfer with 4.5GB/15 Min, it is coming around 2.5TB for 1 week. Azure File sync syncing up the data from on-premises to the azure file share and deletes the differences there. So, the size remains same like the file server.
Hope, this clears your question.

Please mark as "Accept the answer" if the above steps helps you. Others with similar issues can also follow the solution as per your suggestion

Regards,

Manu

Answer 2

Hello @Michael Hulley ,

In my understanding, we can't control the sync interval.
But, we can go for a bandwidth limit used by Azure Sync and there by controlling the data transfer volume. Again, this has to be setup with the help of PowerShell
There are some useful links available for setting up bandwidth throttling of Azure file sync and i am providing a link as below

https://gist.github.com/veeravat/aa9b7b20192cdac1106aa01e417e3e31

Please check and see if it helps. I also suggest you to contact Microsoft support on checking for any other way of controlling this consumption rate.

Thanks,
Manu

Answer 3

@MHulley Firstly, apologies for the delay in responding here and any inconvenience this issue may have caused.

From the description, you are using the metrics to determine 4.5 GiB is sent ever 15 minutes, so either something on the server is changing those files or there may be a permission change and we're syncing . The metrics will show the full file was synced but we're really just updating the metadata

I would recommend looking at the Event ID 9102 and 9302 events on the server to monitor sync progress

How do I monitor sync health?: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/storage/files/storage-sync-files-troubleshoot?tabs=server%2Cazure-portal#broken-sync

How do I monitor the progress of a current sync session?

If you are seeing a high amount of sync traffic and they didn't make ACL changes or modify a large number of files, I would use a tool like process explorer to monitor file system activity: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/process-explorer

Hope this helps!

Kindly let us know if the above helps or you need further assistance on this issue.

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