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Azure Data Box Gateway limits

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Consider these limits as you deploy and operate your Microsoft Azure Data Box Gateway solution.

Data Box Gateway service limits

  • The storage account should be physically closest to the region where the device is deployed (it can be different from where the service is deployed).
  • Moving a Data Box Gateway resource to a different subscription or resource group is not supported. For more details, go to Move resources to new resource group or subscription.

Data Box Gateway device limits

The following table describes the limits for the Data Box Gateway device.

Description Value
No. of files per device 100 million
For every 25 million files that are being added (with maximum limit at 100 million), you should add 2 TB of disk space, 8 GB of RAM, and 4 cores of CPU.
No. of shares per device 24
No. of shares per Azure storage container 1
Maximum file size written to a share For a 2-TB virtual device, maximum file size is 500 GB.
The maximum file size increases with the data disk size in the preceding ratio until it reaches a maximum of 5 TB.

Azure storage limits

This section describes the limits for Azure Storage service, and the required naming conventions for Azure Files, Azure block blobs, and Azure page blobs, as applicable to the Azure Stack Edge / Data Box Gateway service. Review the storage limits carefully and follow all the recommendations.

For the latest information on Azure storage service limits and best practices for naming shares, containers, and files, go to:

Important

If there are any files or directories that exceed the Azure Storage service limits, or do not conform to Azure Files/Blob naming conventions, then these files or directories are not ingested into the Azure Storage via the Azure Stack Edge / Data Box Gateway service.

Data upload caveats

Following caveats apply to data as it moves into Azure.

  • We suggest that more than one device should not write to the same container.
  • If you have an existing Azure object (such as a blob or a file) in the cloud with the same name as the object that is being copied, the device will overwrite the file in the cloud.
  • An empty directory hierarchy (without any files) created under share folders is not uploaded to the blob containers.
  • You can copy the data using drag and drop with File Explorer or via the command line. If the aggregate size of files being copied is greater than 10 GB, we recommend you use a bulk-copy program such as Robocopy or rsync. The bulk-copy tools retry the copy operation for intermittent errors and provide additional resiliency.
  • If the share associated with the Azure storage container uploads blobs that do not match the type of blobs defined for the share at the time of creation, then such blobs are not updated. For example, if you create a block blob share on the device, associate the share with an existing cloud container that has page blobs, refresh that share to download the files, and then modify some of the refreshed files that are already stored as page blobs in the cloud, you will see upload failures.
  • After a file is created in the shares, renaming of the file isn't supported.
  • Deletion of a file from a share does not delete the entry in the storage account.
  • If using rsync to copy data, then rsync -a option is not supported.

Azure storage account size and object size limits

Here are the limits on the size of the data that is copied into the storage account. Make sure that the data you upload conforms to these limits. For the most up-to-date information on these limits, see Scalability and performance targets for Blob storage and Azure Files scalability and performance targets.

Size of data copied into Azure storage account Default Limit
Block Blob and page blob 500 TB per storage account

Azure object size limits

Here are the sizes of the Azure objects that can be written. Make sure that all the files that are uploaded conform to these limits.

Azure object type Upload limit
Block Blob ~ 4.75 TB
Page Blob 1 TB
Every file uploaded in Page Blob format must be 512 bytes aligned (an integral multiple), else the upload fails.
The VHD and VHDX are 512 bytes aligned.
Azure Files 1 TB
Every file uploaded in Page Blob format must be 512 bytes aligned (an integral multiple), else the upload fails.
The VHD and VHDX are 512 bytes aligned.

Important

Creation of files (irrespective of the storage type) is allowed up to 5 TB. However, if you create a file whose size is greater than the upload limit defined in the preceding table, the file does not get uploaded. You have to manually delete the file to reclaim the space.

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