Edit

Compare StorSimple with Azure File Sync and Azure Stack Edge data transfer options

  • Article

Caution

ACTION REQUIRED: StorSimple Data Manager, StorSimple Device Manager, StorSimple 1200, and StorSimple 8000 have reached their end of support. End of support details were published in 2019 on the Microsoft Lifecycle Policy and Azure Communications pages. Additional notifications were also sent via email and posted on the Azure portal and StorSimple documentation site. Contact Microsoft Support for additional details.

This document provides an overview of options for on-premises data transfer to Azure, comparing: Azure Stack Edge vs. Azure File Sync vs. StorSimple 8000 series.

  • Azure Stack Edge – Azure Stack Edge is an on-premises network device that moves data into and out of Azure and has AI-enabled Edge compute to pre-process data during upload. Data Box Gateway is a virtual version of the device with the same data transfer capabilities.
  • Azure File Sync – Azure File Sync can be used to centralize your organization's file shares in Azure Files, while keeping the flexibility, performance, and compatibility of an on-premises file server. Azure File Sync transforms Windows Server into a quick cache of your Azure file share. General availability of Azure File Sync was announced earlier in 2018.
  • StorSimple – StorSimple is a hybrid device that helps enterprises consolidate their storage infrastructure for primary storage, data protection, archiving, and disaster recovery on a single solution by tightly integrating with Azure storage. The product lifecycle for StorSimple can be found here.

Comparison summary

StorSimple 8000 Azure File Sync Azure Stack Edge
Overview Tiered hybrid storage and archival General file server storage with cloud tiering and multi-site sync. Storage solution to pre-process data and send it over network to Azure.
Scenarios File server, archival, backup target File server, archival (multi-site) Data transfer, data pre-processing including ML inferencing, IoT, archival
Edge compute Not available Not available Supports running containers using Azure IoT Edge
Form factor Physical device Agent installed on Windows Server Physical device
Hardware Physical device provided from Microsoft as part of the service Customer provided Physical device provided from Microsoft as part of the service
Data format Custom format Files Blobs or Files
Protocol support iSCSI SMB, NFS SMB or NFS
Pricing StorSimple Azure File Sync Data Box Edge

Next steps