data looks like it’s available locally on the StorSimple appliance because even data that
has been moved to Microsoft Azure Storage keeps a local thumbprint (representing
the Microsoft Azure stored data) on the StorSimple storage appliance, like a stub file
but at a data block level.
If data that has been offloaded to Microsoft Azure is accessed, the StorSimple device
will automatically download it and make it available, but obviously this would impact
storage performance because the data has to be downloaded over the Internet. It is
also possible to pin certain data always to be kept locally (near) or configure it to be
offloaded to Microsoft Azure as soon as possible (far). StorSimple uses storage in
different ways, in that there is SSD Linear (not deduplicated), SSD Dedupe
(deduplicated), and then HDD (which is deduplicated and compressed). What is not
shown is the final Microsoft Azure Storage tier. Data stored in Microsoft Azure
Storage is not only deduplicated and compressed, but also encrypted using a key
known only to the StorSimple appliance. Initially, data is written to the SSD Linear
tier and then over time deduplicated in SSD, and then, depending on its usage, it may
get moved to the HDD tier or even Microsoft Azure Storage.
This automatic tiering may sound familiar. Storage Spaces in Windows Server 2012 R2
does something similar with its HDD and SSD tiers. Initially, StorSimple was based on
Linux, but this changed with the recent release now to be Windows based. I also don’t
think it would be much of a “leap” for the StorSimple algorithms used to offload to
Microsoft Azure to find their way into some future version of Windows Server and
become part of Storage Spaces, adding the Microsoft Azure Storage tier to Storage
Spaces. This is all pure conjecture on my part, but it would make complete sense
because Microsoft pushes Storage Spaces and it now owns StorSimple.
The StorSimple appliances come in different sizes. To help you use Microsoft Azure
Storage more easily, Microsoft is giving them away if you purchase certain amounts of
Microsoft Azure credit. StorSimple is a great solution in certain key scenarios. It’s
great as a storage for file servers and archive servers. It can be used for low- to mid-
range Hyper-V VM storage and SQL workloads, including SharePoint. It should not be
used for high disk IOPs Hyper-V and SQL scenarios because it will not deliver the
storage performance that is required. It should also not be used as a backup target
because once it hits a certain threshold percent full of its local storage, all future
writes basically have to go directly to Microsoft Azure, which means at that point the
storage performance would be terrible during the backup.
Microsoft Azure Storage can be used in many other ways, especially when combined
with ExpressRoute to provide fast, low-latency connectivity such as through custom
applications and more, but the backup scenario and StorSimple are powerful and easy
ways to quickly get real benefits.
Virtual Networks
Microsoft Azure Virtual Networks enables networks to be defined that have the
following benefits: