Oracle workloads do not move to the cloud on storage promises alone. They only move when performance is predictable, operational needs are familiar, and the platform gives teams the flexibility they need to grow without disruption or the need to redesign or remigrate a database architecture as requirements evolve.

That was the foundation of the Azure Architecture Center Oracle Database with Azure NetApp Files reference architecture, which documents how Azure NetApp Files provides high-performance NFS storage for Oracle Database on Azure virtual machines. The article remains an important reference for customers who want low latency, high throughput, flexible scaling, data protection, and cloning for demanding Oracle environments.

Since then, Azure NetApp Files has grown and evolved. New capabilities now make Oracle environments easier to size, deploy, protect, replicate, migrate, and clone on Azure. This article builds on the original Azure Architecture Center guidance and highlights what has changed: flexible service level capacity pools, application volume group for Oracle, availability-zone-aware volume placement, migration assistant, short-term clones, cool access, and expanded data protection options.

This article explains how Oracle on Azure Virtual Machines can benefit from using Azure NetApp Files volumes for primary database storage and provides an additional look at how Azure NetApp Files can complement Oracle AI Database@Azure as a backup target and a source for rapid, space-efficient database clones.

Co-authors:

Arnt de Gier, Azure NetApp Files Product Manager
Jeffrey Steiner, Principal Architect, NetApp

Azure NetApp Files Advancements Overview

The most important advances are not just about faster storage. They are about making Oracle environments easier to size, deploy, protect, migrate, replicate, and reuse across the full database lifecycle.

Key advancements include:

Flexible service level capacity pools
Capacity and throughput can now be tuned independently. Some databases are heavy on IOPS, while others are bandwidth-hungry. ANF capacity pools now help you avoid overprovisioning and align storage performance more closely with actual Oracle workload demand.
Application volume group for Oracle
Deployment of Oracle data, redo, archive, and backup volumes can be automated through a workflow that applies Oracle-aware layout and placement guidance.
Availability-zone-aware volume placement
Oracle VMs and Azure NetApp Files volumes can be aligned in the same availability zone to reduce avoidable latency and support more predictable performance.
Enhanced data protection and replication
Snapshots, backup, cross-zone replication, and cross-region replication give customers more options to protect Oracle data and design for business continuity.
Migration assistant
ONTAP-based volumes can be migrated to Azure NetApp Files using efficient block-level replication, preserving file structure, permissions, and existing snapshots while enabling incremental cutover planning.
Short-term clones
Snapshots can be turned into writable, space-efficient clones for test, development, reporting, validation, or troubleshooting without creating full physical copies.
Storage with cool access
Inactive data can be tiered automatically to optimize storage cost while keeping data accessible through the same Azure NetApp Files namespace. This helps manage the cost of Azure NetApp Files volumes used as backup targets for Oracle databases.
Oracle Database@Azure backup and clone integration - Azure NetApp Files can be used as a high-performance backup target and a source for rapid, space-efficient test and development refreshes using snapshots and short-term clones.

Together, these advancements shift the conversation from simply “Can Oracle run well on Azure NetApp Files?” to “How can Oracle environments on Azure become easier to operate, easier to protect, and easier to scale?” For customers, that means more deployment confidence, better cost control, faster refresh cycles, and a more practical path to modernizing Oracle workloads on Azure.

Azure NetApp Files Advancements in Detail

Flexible service level capacity pools

To match Azure NetApp Files storage to the real needs of each Oracle workload use Flexible service level to enable sizing and scaling of capacity and throughput independently of each other instead of sizing capacity and performance together like you do with the traditional service levels (standard, premium and ultra). For an Oracle DBA, this means you can allocate the storage capacity your database requires and then tune throughput separately for the expected I/O profile. You start with a baseline throughput of 128 MiB/s and can increase performance in small increments, up to five times the Ultra service level per provisioned 1 TiB. This makes it easier to support demanding databases without over-provisioning storage, and it can reduce costs by 10–40% by paying only for the capacity and performance the workload actually needs. As database demand changes, you can adjust the balance between capacity and throughput to keep performance aligned with current requirements.

Oracle Direct NFS

Oracle Direct NFS (dNFS) with Azure NetApp Files gives Oracle workloads a faster, cleaner path to primary storage. Because dNFS is built into Oracle Database, it lets Oracle access Azure NetApp Files through a database-optimized NFS client rather than relying only on the host operating system. For customers, that means more predictable performance, simpler operations, and a practical way to modernize Oracle environments without changing proven NFS-based operating models.

This pairing is especially useful for performance-sensitive Oracle databases, where low latency, scalable throughput, and operational consistency matter. Azure NetApp Files provides enterprise-grade shared storage with flexible capacity and throughput, while dNFS helps Oracle use that storage efficiently for production, reporting, migration, consolidation, and test/dev scenarios.

The result is a storage architecture that is easy to understand, easy to scale, and easy to protect. Customers can keep familiar Oracle-on-NFS practices while gaining the elasticity, data protection, replication, backup, and cloning capabilities of Azure NetApp Files.

Predictable Oracle performance with a database-optimized NFS access path.
Greater migration confidence for customers moving from on-premises NAS to Azure.
Simpler storage operations with Azure NetApp Files snapshots, backup, replication, and cloning.
Flexible scaling of capacity and throughput as Oracle workload demand changes.

Oracle Direct NFS provides a database-optimized I/O path from Oracle Database on Azure VMs to Azure NetApp Files primary NFS storage, while Azure NetApp Files adds scalable throughput and enterprise data services such as snapshots, backup, replication, and cloning.

Application volume group for Oracle

Application volume group (AVG) for Oracle is a feature offered through Azure NetApp Files, designed to simplify the process of deploying all required volumes to install and run an Oracle database on Azure VMs (IaaS).

With just one workflow, you can provision volumes for data, redo, archive, and backup. This consolidation streamlines volume management, enforces best practices, and supports easy adjustments for size and throughput after deployment, all while keeping the flexibility of Azure NetApp Files volumes.

Application volume group for Oracle was recently enhanced with new functionality:

Availability zone volume placement: volumes should be placed in the same availability zone as the Oracle virtual machines, minimizing network latency by shortening the data path.
Data protection volume group creation: The same automated process allows you to create a data protection volume group with matching layout and naming for business continuity and disaster recovery in a secondary availability zone or region.
Standard network features: always utilize standard network features for best performance.
Enhanced performance: by deploying data and log volumes on separate storage endpoints, IOs are processed independently, preventing data read slowdowns during high-priority log writes. Application volume group will deploy multiple data volumes across different storage endpoints for large-scale workloads, using sizing inputs and affinity rules to optimize performance.

Availability zone volume placement

The efficiency of application volume group for Oracle is enhanced by aligning Azure NetApp Files volumes with the application VMs in the same availability zone. This alignment is crucial for meeting strict latency requirements, ensuring your Oracle applications run smoothly and efficiently.

Using compute in one zone and storage in another across a cross-zone data path (right side) introduces unnecessary latency and is easily avoided using availability zone aware volume placement and placing compute and storage in the same zone over a short data path (left side).

High availability

Azure availability zones are distinct locations within a region. By deploying Oracle volumes and application VMs in the same zone - and replicating data and redo logs to a secondary zone or region using cross-zone replication or cross-region replication you minimize the risk data loss during a disaster. Azure NetApp Files’ built-in replication can offload the replication of data files and volumes freeing up compute resources for transaction processing and deliver an RPO as low as 10 minutes. The replica can also be activated for a near-zero RTO. If an RPO and RTO all the way down to zero are required, you can use Oracle Data Guard to create a fully operational hot standby copy of your database.

Standard network features

The use of standard network features is recommended for all new implementations of Azure NetApp Files volumes. Basic network features is no longer supported for new deployments and will be phased out completely. Volumes using basic network features can be migrated to standard network features without interruption.

Simplified deployment

The automated application volume group deployment workflow accelerates and simplifies volume deployment, significantly reducing the risk of human error and resulting in a more reliable setup.

Optimal volume placement

Application volume group considers the underlying physical resources, applying affinity and anti-affinity rules to find the best locations for performance-critical volumes. This process ensures that your deployment achieves optimal performance; this is not possible with manual, one-by-one volume provisioning. Application volume group also splits data and log volumes across different storage endpoints to maximize performance and reduce contention.

Scalability and flexibility

Volume capacity and throughput can be easily resized before, during, or after deployment, allowing you to adapt your Oracle environment to changing needs without sacrificing availability or performance. Volume resizing and throughput adjustments can be done without interruption to the storage service and while the database is online.

Integrated data protection

Volumes deployed by application volume group are compatible with Azure NetApp Files data protection solutions, such as efficient, application-consistent snapshots and backup offloading. Data management tools like AzAcSnap, NetApp SnapCenter® software or other 3^rd-party data protection tools compatible with Azure NetApp Files are required to further ensure the consistency and safety of your Oracle data.

Using application volume group for Oracle

To use application volume groups, you need an Azure NetApp Files capacity pool that matches or exceeds the recommendations from the sizing exercise, and to be configured with Manual QoS. This setting allows application volume group to independently set volume throughput and capacity, making the most efficient use of the capacity pool since no overprovisioning will be required in this concept. The application volume group workflow calculates minimum required size and throughput based on your inputs and offers recommendations for optional backup volumes. After a successful pre-check it validates your inputs against the selected capacity pool, you simply click to deploy and after a few minutes your volumes are ready to mount onto your Oracle application VMs.

VM IO throttling

Not covered in this blog, but what may add to a more friendly TCO is the fact that network IO is not throttled by Azure VMs like managed disk is. This directly results in larger storage bandwidth when used with network connected storage like Azure NetApp Files. You may achieve the same or better performance with a smaller VM SKU, and this may have positive consequences for licensing as well.
Oracle on Azure specialists are available to help you with sizing Azure NetApp Files capacity pools, volumes and VM SKUs using your AWR reports.

Automatic Storage Management (ASM)

Oracle’s Automatic Storage Management is primarily designed to stripe data across multiple devices. This helps improve performance, plus devices can be added and removed nondisruptively, which makes capacity management easier.

Azure NetApp Files has the same capabilities, making ASM generally unnecessary. With Azure NetApp Files, IO is striped across multiple devices as the physical storage layer, and volumes can be resized on the fly and even throughput can be adjusted on the fly.

If you require ASM, for example, if you have existing procedures and scripts that depend on ASM, it is still fully supported with Azure NetApp Files and features like dynamic performance management still apply. You also get additional benefits. For example, you can create instant, space-efficient snapshots of your ASM diskgroups, and those snapshots can be offloaded to Azure NetApp Files backup for long term retention and protection against unlikely complete volume loss or corruption.

Migration assistant

Migration assistant allows for efficient migration of on-premises NetApp ONTAP® based storage volumes to Azure NetApp Files volumes.

This enables optimized volume migration to Azure NetApp Files volumes using NetApp SnapMirror® technology, providing:

Optimized volume migration with encryption and compression in transit to save network bandwidth
Complete database volumes are migrated, including the complete file structure with permissions and previously taken snapshots
Dry-run options are offered to perform intermediate testing of the migrated data volumes
Flexible cut-over planning with block-level incremental final transfer

Short-term clones

Azure NetApp Files short-term clones help reduce costs by allowing space-efficient provisioning of volume clones from snapshots for test/dev and other purposes.

The space efficiency stems from smart block manipulation in Azure NetApp Files, where the short-term clone uses the same blocks as the originating volume except for any changes made. Changed and new data blocks are written to a separate space in the short-term clone volume. Short-term clones are available almost immediately after creation and only take space in the capacity pool for any anticipated changes to be written to the clones. This saves capacity pool allocation space and cost. After 32 days short-term clones need to be either removed or converted to full independent clones.
Use short-term clones to rapidly create copies of production databases for analysis and test and development at minimal cost impact.

Storage with cool access

Leveraging Azure NetApp Files storage with cool access enables customers to optimize their storage strategies, reduce expenses, and efficiently manage their data lifecycle. Cool access automatically moves unused data to the Azure storage account without any changes required to user behavior or applications. This flexibility and efficiency make it a valuable option for a wide range of use cases, including backup and archival, data lakes, and compliance storage.

Sizing Your Volume Deployment for Oracle

Sizing tools are available to help determine the required volume configuration for Oracle. When migrating databases to Azure, generate Automatic Workload Repository (AWR) reports to analyze your current storage activity. AWR reports should be created at times when the database is at its highest load and run for a few hours. These reports allow the migration team to project suitable Azure NetApp Files volumes.
You can also upload multiple AWR reports to online sizing utilities such as the Atroposs and obtain recommendations for Azure NetApp Files capacity pool and volume layout using the Atroposs Azure NetApp Files Oracle Volumes TCO Estimator module which uses the measurements from the AWR reports provided. Since the database size is not included in the AWR reports, you need to enter the database size(s) manually. You can collect database sizes using this SQL script. Both volume capacity and throughput can be changed any time after deployment, providing flexibility and cost-efficiency. Please visit aka.ms/anftools for additional Azure NetApp Files estimator and sizing tools.

Using Azure NetApp Files as backup target and test/dev for Oracle AI Database@Azure

For Oracle AI Database@Azure deployments, Azure NetApp Files volumes can add value as high-performance backup targets that also become practical data sources for rapid test and development refreshes.

If all you need is a simple, easy-to-manage high-throughput RMAN backup target, Azure NetApp Files can be used as a simple, yet high-performance shared filesystem. You can also take snapshots of your RMAN backups for additional protection and replicate those backups to other regions.

If you really want to reduce your backup window and slash the capacity required for RMAN backups, you can combine RMAN image and incremental backups with Azure NetApp Files snapshots. The result is an incremental-forever backup strategy, but with a library of full-sized RMAN backups available within the snapshots. Backup windows shrink, and the only extra space required for each backup you retain is for the data that changed between backups.

You can also treat backups as more than just a recovery asset. Backup volumes can be used to capture recent, application-consistent copies of production data and make those copies available for temporary downstream use.

There are two options. First, you can set up a standby database (using Oracle Data Guard or as a traditional standby) to a right-sized VM and then create snapshot-based backups of that replica. That delivers backups as well as a low/zero RPO/RTO DR capability, but it can also be used for cloning. NetApp’s SnapCenter can automate the process from start-to-finish using those snapshots.

That is done through short-term clones. When a backup lands on an Azure NetApp Files volume, a snapshot of that backup set can be used to create a short-term clone. The short-term clone is writable, available quickly, and space-efficient because it references the existing snapshot data and only consumes additional capacity for changed blocks. This makes it well suited for feeding fresh production-like data to test, development, reporting, validation, or troubleshooting environments without creating full physical copies of large Oracle data sets.

Accelerates refresh cycles by making recent backup data available to non-production environments in minutes rather than through lengthy copy or restore processes.
Reduces storage consumption and cost by avoiding full-size duplicate database copies for short-lived test and development needs.
Limits production impact because clone creation is based on backup or snapshot data rather than direct activity against the active production database volumes.
Improves developer and QA productivity by providing realistic, current data sets for functional testing, upgrade validation, performance troubleshooting, and release rehearsal.

After the test/dev activity is complete, the short-term clone can be deleted before it ages out or converted to a regular volume if it needs to be retained longer. This approach turns the Oracle AI Database@Azure backup target into an active data lifecycle asset: protecting the database while also enabling faster, lower-cost access to fresh data for innovation and operational readiness.

That’s not the only route to leveraging short-term clones. If you’re using Azure NetApp Files with the incremental-forever backup strategy, each of those snapshots contains a fully consistent set of datafiles. You can also clone them and bring them up as an operational database using your own automation tools.

Summary

Consider the use of Azure NetApp Files volumes for your Oracle databases for flexibility, cost-efficiency, data protection and high-availability. You may achieve the same or better database performance even when using smaller VM SKUs in Azure. Snapshots provide extremely fast and efficient primary data protection from which complete databases can be restored very quickly. Use RMAN or other integrated backup applications to orchestrate the creation of snapshots for application consistency and easy operation.

Application volume group for Oracle provides a robust solution for deploying multiple Azure NetApp Files volumes for use with Oracle, optimizing performance, availability, and management of your Oracle databases. Leveraging availability zone placement ensures that your Oracle environment is resilient and ready for modern business challenges. Use application volume group for Oracle also for provisioning data protection volumes in an alternate zone or region and use cross-zone and cross-region replication to offload data and log volume replication from the application VMs for higher efficiency and better performance.

For efficient migration of on-premises ONTAP-based volumes to Azure NetApp Files, use migration assistant.

When using Oracle AI Database@Azure consider sending backup data to Azure NetApp Files volumes to allow space-efficient volume cloning and feeding test/dev operations with fresh data from production.

Consult Oracle on Azure specialists for sizing Azure NetApp Files volumes and VM SKUs for your Oracle deployment on IaaS in Azure.

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Updated Jul 02, 2026

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GeertVanTeylingen

Microsoft

Joined October 04, 2018

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Optimize Oracle workloads on Azure with Azure NetApp Files

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Introduction