Public Preview of Azure Native Dell PowerScale
Dell and Microsoft are extending their partnership by bringing Dell's flagship unstructured data product, OneFS, to Azure as a new fully managed offering – now in Public Preview. Dell PowerScale for Microsoft Azure packs all the well-known benefits from OneFS in an Azure Native ISV service. This is a result of a co-development effort to create an easy-to-deploy and easy-to-manage filesystem-as-a-service. Power of choice Microsoft customers can now choose between two flavors of Dell PowerScale. One is the existing customer managed version, and the other is the newly released Dell managed PowerScale for Microsoft Azure. Both solutions allow customers to run OneFS in Azure, an enterprise-grade software-defined solution that integrates scale-out PowerScale and Microsoft's public cloud platform. PowerScale offers an end-to-end data solution for many AI, HPC and enterprise use cases with keeping simplicity top of mind. Both solutions offer efficiency, performance, resiliency, multi-petabyte scalability and feature set expected from an enterprise storage solution like PowerScale to Azure. You can replicate your data estate between on-premises and Azure-based deployments and optimize your hybrid data estate with data reduction through compression, deduplication and file tiering to scalable, cost-effective Azure Blob Storage with Cloud Pools. Rich Azure ecosystems for AI and Analytics services, cloud-based disaster recovery, or application bursting are now easily accessible for existing and new PowerScale customers. The only difference is the way you deploy and manage your storage solution. In a customer managed Dell PowerScale for Azure solution, customers deploy and manage the entire software and infrastructure stack. All the compute, networking and storage resources are in a customer’s tenant. If this is the preferred option, you can start with the deployment guide and provision a standalone PowerScale cluster now. However, if you are looking for a fully managed solution, Dell PowerScale for Microsoft Azure is the right choice. As a managed service, Dell implements and manages the underlying infrastructure stack, and is responsible for support activities, including platform upgrades and maintenance tasks. What is Dell PowerScale for Microsoft Azure, An Azure Native ISV Service Dell PowerScale for Microsoft Azure is a fully managed service, implemented as an Azure Native ISV service (LINK). It is deployed and managed through the Azure Portal and transactable through Azure Marketplace. This allows all Microsoft customers to use their existing Azure commitments and contracts to easily pay for and use this new offering. Unlike existing customer managed Dell PowerScale for Azure, this implementation runs in a Dell managed environment. The responsibility for service deployment and maintenance belongs to Dell while the customers consume the service in a cloud-native manner. The same ease-of-use typically tied to SaaS services, now applies to a traditional, enterprise grade storage system, like PowerScale. Customers can simply deploy the resource with the familiar Azure portal experience and start consuming a new petabyte scale OneFS cluster. As an Azure Native ISV service, Dell PowerScale for Microsoft Azure allows customers to manage their solution with a well-known Azure user interface. Customers can choose between Azure Portal, Azure CLI, or PowerShell. “Two industry leaders, one powerful solution raising the bar for enterprise cloud storage. Dell PowerScale for Microsoft Azure offers seamless scalability up to 8.4PB in a single namespace, versatile multi-protocol support, robust security, and is fully managed by Dell. This integration simplifies hybrid cloud operations while maintaining consistent high performance for data-intensive workloads like AI/ML, and EDA, helping you stay ahead to unlock your next breakthrough." Travis Vigil, SVP, Infrastructure Storage Group, Product Management at Dell Technologies. Dell PowerScale for Microsoft Azure provides up to 8.4PB in a single namespace and is available in 9 Azure regions. Supported regions: US East US South Central US West 2 West Europe North Europe UK South Germany West Central Australia East Southeast Asia How to take the next step Azure Marketplace Listing Request a Dell Reference Number for Public Preview Dell Documentation
📢 [Public Preview] Accelerating BlobNFS throughput & scale with FUSE for superior performance
Azure Blob Storage can be mounted and accessed like a local file system using BlobFuse, which is a FUSE-based driver for the Blob REST API. Customers choose BlobFuse for AI/ML, HPC, analytics and backup workloads. It provides exceptionally high throughput along with benefits like local caching and security integration via Azure Entra ID. For customers requiring NFS 3.0 protocol support or POSIX compliance, Azure Blob Storage also natively supports NFSv3 (aka BlobNFS). It enables Azure Blob storage access for customers’ legacy applications without requiring changes. BlobNFS is accessed via the Linux NFS client combined with our AZNFS mount helper package, which streamlines mounting and reliably connecting to Blob Storage’s NFS endpoints. Please note that BlobNFS only supports access over a virtual network since Azure Entra ID based auth isn’t yet available on NFS 3.0. Today, we’re excited to announce an update to AZNFS (3.0) for BlobNFS, which now uses the same libfuse3 library that powers BlobFuse bringing significant improvements in performance and scale. The updated AZNFS for BlobNFS delivers significantly higher throughput, larger file support, better metadata performance, and removes user group limits, enhancing performance for demanding workloads. Maximize Virtual Machine throughput: AZNFS now supports up to 256 TCP connections (up from16 in native NFS client) allowing throughput to reach VM NIC bandwidth (the maximum data transfer rate of virtual machine’s network interface card) or storage account limits. This benefits HPC workloads by ensuring high throughput for large dataset operations. Additionally, a small number (4 or fewer) of parallel file reads/writes can now fully saturate the VM NIC bandwidth even for larger VM sizes. Enhanced read/write speed: The updated AZNFS client outperforms native NFS client for read and write scenarios. For example, single file read/write performance is improved by a factor of 5x and 3x respectively, which can be useful for large database backup tasks requiring high single file throughput for writing and reading backup files. Refer to the link for a detailed performance comparison. Removal of the user's group limit: Linux NFS clients with a local Identity server can pass access permissions for up to 16 groups of a user, restricting resource access for users belonging to more than 16 groups. This update allows FUSE to handle permission checks, removing the 16-group limitation. Improved metadata query performance: READDIR can query more directory entries in one call. The Linux client has a limit of 1MB, whereas the updated AZNFS can now reach up to 3 MB. Customers with numerous files will experience quicker listing and metadata operations with reduced latency. This will be beneficial for workloads like EDA (Electronic Design Automation) and HPC (High Performance Computing) which often involve reading metadata for considerable number of files before selecting a subset for processing. Support for large file sizes (up to 5TB): The new release can support larger file sizes for sequential write patterns. Due to larger block sizes possible with AZNFS, users can create larger files up to the 5TB limit. With Linux clients, under best conditions, the max. file sizes were limited to ~3TB. CAD tools producing simulation and checkpoint data files over 3TB will benefit from this improvement. The following charts compare performance between updated AZNFS and the Native Linux client. Please refer the detailed benchmarks for more details. [Test parameters - VM: Standard D96ds v5, File size: 100GB, Linux NFS is with nconnect =16, Linux kernel 5.x.x ; Test used: DD test] Note: The VM supports higher read throughput than write throughput. For updated AZNFS, throughput starting from 4 parallel file read/write operations is constrained by VM NIC bandwidth, or it can scale higher. Getting Started Please register for the preview using this form. Please refer the link for instructions on how to install and use latest version of AZNFS. For any queries or feedback, please contact us at aznfs@microsoft.com. References: What is BlobFuse? - BlobFuse2 - Azure Storage | Microsoft Learn Network File System (NFS) 3.0 protocol support for Azure Blob Storage Mount Blob Storage by using the Network File System (NFS) 3.0 protocol on Linux Instructions to install and use latest version of AZNFS · Azure/AZNFS-mount WikiAzure September: Announced end of life
For those who missed the last announces of Azure end of life, please find a small recap: Azure AI Intelligence The Azure AI Document Intelligence API v2.0 will be retired on August 31, 2026. You are simply encouraged to migrate to the same API but in version 3.1 which obviously offers more features than the previous one. Azure AI Video Indexer Due to the withdrawal of Azure Media Services, announced during the month of July, Microsoft has decided to remove all dependencies related to Azure Media from Azure AI Video Indexer, starting January 15, 2024. Azure FarmBeats The Azure FarmBeats project will be retired on September 30, 2023. For those who are not familiar with Azure FarmBeats, it is a solution that allows you to aggregate agricultural datasets from different providers. Instead, Microsoft offers Azure Data Manager for Agriculture, which is actually an enhanced version of the Azure FarmBeats project. Azure HPC Azure FXT Edge Filer which is a caching appliance for HPC computing tasks will be retired on December 31, 2026. However, no information on a possible service which will replace it. Azure Kubernetes Service The AKS product team has decided to remove Azure Monitor for AKS-Engine on September 14, 2026. You are therefore encouraged to use Azure Monitor for Containers functionality instead. We continue with another decommission on AKS which concerns the HTTP application routing add-on module, which will be deleted on March 3, 2025. Please note that this module is no longer supported since version 1.22 of K8S. Instead, you are encouraged to use the Web Application routing add-on. Azure Sphere The Classic version of Azure Sphere CLI will be decommissioned on September 30, 2024. No worries here for its replacement which is none other than Azure Sphere CLI. Azure Database for MariaDB End of life of Azure Database for MariaDB which will be retired on September 19, 2025. Microsoft therefore suggests that you use Azure Database for MySQL instead which offers more features. Azure Monitor The removal of the Data Collector API that manages custom log ingestion into Azure Monitor logs will be done on September 14, 2026. Before this date, you will need to migrate to the rules-based log ingestion API which provides all the functionality of the Data Collector API, plus some new features. On September 30, 2026 the "Classic" URL Ping Tests configured on Application Insights will be deleted, in favor of the "Standard" tests. Azure Storage The product team announced for September 13, 2024 the removal of the old Azure Storage Python client libraries, but also the Azure Storage Ruby client libraries, as well as the old Azure Storage Go client libraries. Instead you will have to use the new libraries. Azure Maps The product team announces that the Azure Maps Data V1/V2 APIs will be retired on September 16, 2024. Instead, Azure Maps has deployed Data Registry APIs that provide enhanced data security. Azure Maps Render V1 APIs will be retired on September 17, 2026. You are therefore encouraged to migrate or deploy Azure Maps Render V2 APIs, which provide improved data quality and performance compared to the previous version. The Azure Maps Gen1 pricing tier will no longer exist from September 15, 2026. You will therefore need to upgrade to the Azure Maps Gen2 pricing tier which offers simplified pricing and better flexibility.Azure HPC Cache Updates: New Caching Option, Discounted Pricing, and More!
New Releases Azure HPC Cache Premium Read-Write We’re excited to announce the preview of Azure HPC Cache Premium Read-Write. This next generation of premium caching for high-performance computing workloads is designed to provide high-bandwidth and low-latency access to files. Azure compute clients are provided with read and write performance like what they would experience from a local NVMe drive. Premium HPC Cache provides lower latency than the Standard HPC Cache for your compute-intensive enterprise workloads. You can provision up to 84 TB of capacity in a single cache and point thousands of compute clients at the cache to get up to 20 GB/s of read throughput. Premium HPC Cache’s highlights include: Increased Read Throughput: up to 20 GB/sec against an 80+ TiB dataset Reduced Latency: 150 µsec for reads, 1 msec for writes Increased Write Throughput: 24.5% increase in write operations IOPS Scalability: 170,000 random 4 KiB writes; 450,000 random 4 KiB reads With our lowest-latency cache, Premium HPC Cache provides our best file-based performance to meet your time-sensitive workloads like media rendering, simulations for genomics and financial models, as well as chip design. Getting Started with Premium Read-Write Azure HPC Cache Premium Read-Write is currently available as a Public Preview in select regions. If you are interested in participating in the preview, you can create a new cache and choose the Premium (Preview) option. Overview of Current and New Offerings Attribute Read-Write Standard Caching Read-Only Caching Read-Write Premium Caching Throughput SKU 2, 4, or 8 GB/sec 4.5, 9, or 16 GB/sec 5, 10, or 20 GB/sec Write Throughput 1.1, 2.2, 4.4 GB/sec N/A GB/sec (write-through) 2.3, 4.6, 9.2 GB/sec Read IOPS 62.5K, 125K, 250K ops/sec 160K, 320K, 480K ops/sec 500K, 1M, 2M ops/sec Write IOPS 16.75K, 33.5K, 67K ops/sec N/A ops/sec (write-through) 135K, 270K, 540K ops/sec Cache sizes 3, 6, or 12 TB for 2 GB/sec 6, 12, or 24 TB for 4 GB/sec 12, 24, or 48 TB for 8 GB/sec 21 TB for 4.5 GB/sec 42 TB for 9 GB/sec 84 TB for 16 GB/sec 21 TB for 5 GB/sec 42 TB for 10 GB/sec 84 TB for 20 GB/sec Maximum number of storage targets 20 20 20 Compatible storage target types Azure Blob, NFS (on-premises), ADLS-NFS (NFSv3-enabled Azure Blob) NFS (on-premises), ADLS-NFS (NFSv3-enabled Azure Blob) Azure Blob, NFS (on-premises), ADLS-NFS (NFSv3-enabled Azure Blob) Caching styles Read caching or read-write caching Read caching only Read-write caching Cache can be stopped to save cost when not needed Yes No No *Results were without use of the priming feature. Additional details on priming will be included in our next blog post. Lower Pricing for Azure HPC Cache - Standard While it seems like the cost of everything is going up, we’re happy to report a price drop. As part of our commitment to provide the most cost-effective performance cache, we’re excited to share that we have dropped Azure HPC Cache – Standard prices by up to 33% percent in some regions. The new pricing is effective immediately. This enables cost-conscious verticals like media and entertainment to meet strict rendering deadlines while spending less on caching. Life sciences customers who rely on grants to fund their genomics research can now stretch their funds further. And chip designers can run their EDA workloads at a lower cost and still maintain the high performance for their tools repositories that they’ve come to expect. Terraform Terraform, an open-source software tool created by HashiCorp, provides an orchestration layer to deploy Azure resources. Using Terraform, you can deploy your own vdbench test system with all the required resources to run a performance benchmark. To try this yourself, the HPC Cache team has created a vdbench NFS-backed storage cache Terraform recipe to deploy a Premium 5G cluster and 30 clients. You can additionally run your own benchmarks against a 5G storage cache. Instructions and examples can be found on HPC Cache GitHub.Authenticating to an Azure CycleCloud Slurm cluster with Azure Active Directory
As enterprises increasingly move to using Azure Active Directory for their authentication needs this blog explores how Azure AD and OpenSSH certificate-based authentication may be used to provide authentication to a Slurm cluster. We also utilise the Azure Bastion recent native client support feature to provide remote access to the login node over the public internet.
