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Use Azure Storage Mover to migrate to SMB Azure file shares

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This migration guide describes how to migrate on-premises files to SMB Azure file shares with full fidelity using Azure Storage Mover, a fully managed migration service. You can use Azure Storage Mover to migrate from any SMB source share, including Windows Server, Linux, or NAS. You must have port 443 open outbound on the source in order to use Azure Storage Mover for Azure Files migrations. However, you don't need an SMB connection to your Azure file share because Azure Storage Mover uses the FileREST API to move the data instead of SMB.

Note

If you're using or plan to use Azure File Sync for cloud tiering and on-premises caching, you can use Azure File Sync to migrate on-premises NAS or Windows Server file shares instead of using Azure Storage Mover. If you don't plan to use Azure File Sync long term, use Azure Storage Mover for your migration.

Applies to

File share type SMB NFS
Standard file shares (GPv2), LRS/ZRS Yes No
Standard file shares (GPv2), GRS/GZRS Yes No
Premium file shares (FileStorage), LRS/ZRS Yes No

Why use Azure Storage Mover for Azure Files migrations?

There are several reasons to use Azure Storage Mover to migrate your on-premises SMB file shares to Azure Files.

  • It's faster than other methods such as Robocopy that depend on SMB to move the data to the cloud.
  • Supported file metadata is copied with full fidelity. Unlike object storage in Azure Blobs, an Azure file share can natively store file metadata, and it's important to make sure metadata gets copied from source to target during a migration.
  • It scales well, having been tested with 100 million namespace items (files and folders) from an SMB mount to Azure Files.

Prerequisites

To use Azure Storage Mover to migrate your SMB file shares, the following are required:

  • An Azure subscription and resource group. Review required permissions.
  • An Azure storage account with at least one SMB Azure file share.
  • Your local network must allow the Storage Mover agent to communicate with Azure. Port 443 (TLS) must be open outbound, and your firewall rules shouldn't limit traffic to Azure. Use the connectivity checker on the Storage Mover agent console to learn about the endpoint URLs in Azure that you must allow.

Note

Azure Storage Mover supports using an SMB mount as the source and an SMB Azure file share as the target. Migrating data between other source-target pairs, such as source data on an NFS share to an Azure file share target, isn't currently supported.

Migrate files and metadata using Azure Storage Mover

To migrate your data to Azure Files, follow these steps.

  1. First, create an Azure Storage Mover resource.

  2. Next, deploy one or more Storage Mover agents close to your on-premises migration sources. These are virtual machines (VMs) that can run on Hyper-V or VMware hypervisors.

  3. To utilize your agent for a migration and manage it from the cloud, you need to register the agent VM(s) with your Azure Storage Mover resource. You need to connect locally over SSH to the agent for registration, and all subsequent steps are managed from the Azure portal, Azure PowerShell, or Azure CLI.

  4. Now you must define your source and target endpoints in preparation for migrating your data. When creating the target endpoint, select File share for Target type.

  5. Create a project to collate the shares that need to be migrated together.

  6. Create an Azure Key Vault and place two secrets in it: one for the username and one for the password the agent can use to access the source SMB share.

  7. Define your first migration job in your Storage Mover project, using the source and target pair you've created. For the first migration job, it's best to use the Azure portal. You'll create multiple resources within your Storage Mover resource. There will be a source endpoint and a target endpoint, as well as a few migration settings you should review carefully. In addition, you'll reference the Azure Key Vault secrets when creating your migration job.

  8. Once your migration job and its settings are as you want them, you can start the job. Telemetry and copy logs will help you monitor the progress and success of your migration job. If you want to estimate the time required to perform your migration job, see Azure Storage Mover scale and performance targets.

Verify that the migration succeeded

When the migration job is complete, you should find all the files and folders in your Azure file share, with full fidelity. Review the copy logs to make sure nothing was left behind.

Next steps

Make sure you've enabled backup for your Azure file shares.

See also