Migrate from NetApp to Azure Files

Question

First of all, thank you for any help that comes our way. Sharing is caring. We have a NetApp with about 12TB in shared resources and we want to move to the cloud and use Azure Files. We are not sure about the cost of maintaining the data in Azure, and our main concern is the issue of transactions/IOPS. How should we analyze the data from the NetApp to estimate the approximate cost of the service in Azure Files? Best regards and many thanks for reading this.

Answer 1

Hi Javier Cepa,

Welcome to Microsoft Q&A, thanks for posting your query.

When you are planning to migrate from a NetApp storage solution to Azure Files, it's important to evaluate your current data usage and performance requirements to estimate costs and ensure that Azure files can support your IOPS (Input/Output Operations Per Second).

Here are the few steps to follow.

Current usage data evaluation:

You already know your total Storage size (12TB). It's important to categorize your storage data based on the usage patterns. distinguishing between hot and cold data to optimize the storage costs.

Check your read and write operations, which azure files charges for. NetApp's monitoring tools can help track the operations and provide the logs and IOPS.

Understand how many files are stored, as Azure Files performance can be impacted on the files count for both metadata operations and data access.

Azure Files Tiers:

Select the appropriate Azure Files Tier based on the workload.

• Premium Tier: Ideal for high-performance scenarios, offering low-latency and high IOPS, making it suitable for workloads with large transaction volumes.
• Standard Tier: This includes hot, cool, and archive tiers. It's more cost-effective and it mostly refers to data that doesn't require frequent access.

Estimate the costs using Pricing tools:

Use the Azure Pricing Calculator to estimate the costs based on the storage size, IOPS, and transaction volume. While calculating the costs of Azure Files follow this steps:

• Storage costs: Charged per GB/month, depending on the storage tier selected (Premium, Standard - Hot, Cool, or Archive).
• Transaction costs: Costs are incurred for read, write, and metadata transactions, especially in the standard tiers.

IPOS and Transaction Costs:

• More IPOS can lead to increasing the costs in standard tiers due to transaction based costing. While premium tier provides higher IOPS and throughput but at a fixed price per provisioned storage.
• Azure charges each read, write and metadata operations. Higher the operations performed the cost will be increased.

Migration:

• Azure File Sync: Utilize Azure File Sync to frequently accessed data on-premises, while infrequently accessed data remains in the cloud. This reduces costs for infrequently accessed data.
• Data Lifecycle Management: Move rarely accessed data to cool or archive tiers, reduces the overall costs.

This analysis can get you a brief idea about the performance and estimating the costs for your migration.

reference:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/storage/common/storage-account-overview#pricing

Cost model for Azure NetApp Files | Microsoft Learn

 

Please let us know if you have any further queries. I’m happy to assist you further. 

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