Introducing a new file share-centric management model for Azure Files
Azure Files makes it easy to run your file shares in the cloud without the overhead of on-premises file servers or NAS devices. Until now, managing file shares in Azure has also meant managing storage accounts, an extra layer of management that brings along capacity planning, shared settings, and scaling challenges. To simplify this experience, we're excited to announce the preview of a new file share-centric management model for Azure Files. This shift means you can focus on just the part you care about - creating and using file shares with your applications, without the overhead of storage account management.
With the new management model, you can now:
- Deploy files shares using easy automation as a top-level resource.
- Configure granular secure access by share.
- Monitor and scale per share with added flexibility.
- Leverage simplified transparent pricing with provisioned v2.
Let's look at how this works.
A new way to manage file shares
With the Microsoft.FileShares management model, file shares are now top-level Azure resources, just like virtual machines, disks, or virtual networks. This allows file shares to seamlessly integrate with Azure's ecosystem of tools, including templates, policies, tags, and cost management.
By having file shares as top-level Azure resources, you no longer need to puzzle over which storage account settings actually apply. Each file share comes with only the settings that matter, so you can manage it directly without extra layers of complexity. The result is a simpler, more intuitive experience where you stay focused on your workload, not the infrastructure underneath.
Per share settings unlock a new level of granular control: each file share can now have its own networking and security rules, tailored to the workload it supports. The result is isolation and flexibility: security without compromise.
Provisioning and billing are also simplified in this mode, as you no longer need to capacity plan files against the storage, IOPS, and throughput limits of the storage accounts hosting them. Each file share now scales independently up to Azure Files' limits, so growth in one file share doesn't impact any others. And because Azure billing always works on a per resource basis, every file share stands on its own as a separate billable item. That makes costs easy to track, allocate, or charge back to the right project, department, or customer. Combined with the provisioned v2 billing model for Azure Files, the result is transparent pricing: you provision exactly what you need for each share and can attribute the cost with precision.
In this first release, you'll be able to create and manage NFS file shares on SSD, with support for SMB file shares planned in the future.
Built to scale
Azure Files supports a diverse customer base, ranging from small businesses managing a few shares to large enterprises deploying thousands. It accommodates both traditional file share workloads with long-lived persistent data and dynamic container workloads that provision and decommission file shares frequently. No matter the scenario, our goal is the same: Azure Files should adapt to your workload, not the other way around. These principles are baked directly into the new model, ensuring that users do not need to create additional subscriptions due to management limitations, and that sufficient scalability and performance are provided to meet demanding workloads.
In preview, you can create up to 1,000 file shares per subscription per region. But raw resource counts don't mean much if the management service can't keep pace - just as important, the new model significantly raises the management service limits compared to the storage account model. For most customers, this makes management throttling much less likely, even at scale (see Azure Files scale targets for information on both Microsoft.FileShares and Microsoft.Storage request limits). As we work toward general availability, we plan to further increase both resource and request limits to help customers operate at scale without running into throttling or needing to shard file shares across multiple subscriptions.
Speed matters just as much as scale, and in preview, provisioning a file share has typically been faster than provisioning through a storage account. In our in-house testing, we observed file shares deployed using the new model were about ~2x faster than classic file shares, and we intend to continue to improve those numbers as we work towards general availability.
Get started today
You can start creating file share resources today in preview, which is open to everyone. Just go to the Azure portal, search for "file shares" and click "+ Create":
A few important notes about what's not yet available in preview:
- The new management model is only supported on NFS and not SMB shares (on either SSD or HDD) for now.
- NFS file shares using customer managed keys (CMK), file share soft-delete, and AKS integration via the CSI driver are not yet available, but are planned for general availability.
- The initial preview is available in a limited set of regions, however we will expand this list as we work towards general availability. See regional availability for a complete list.
To learn more, please see:
Microsoft