Azure Files - Simply Explained

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If you've ever had a file server crash on a Friday afternoon, you know the panic, the

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frantic calls, the "is the backup working?"

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Question nobody wants to answer, and the drive to the office just to poke at a blinking

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box.

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I'm Mirko Peters and today we're looking at a better way, as your files.

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Here's the thing about traditional file servers.

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They're physical, which means they need maintenance, security patches, backup management

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and someone to swap a hard drive when it fails.

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For small teams, that's a huge burden.

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You're not running a data center, you're trying to get work done.

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By the end of this episode, you'll understand what Azure files really is, why the new file

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shares resource makes setup much simpler, and when it's the right choice for your team.

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Grab your coffee and let's dive in.

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What is Azure files?

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So what exactly is Azure files?

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Here's the simplest definition.

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Azure files is a cloud-based file share you can mount like a network drive with no server

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to manage, no hardware, no operating system updates, no backup schedules to lose sleep

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over.

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With the traditional file server, you're the admin, with Azure files Microsoft is the admin.

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Think of it as a filing cabinet that lives in Microsoft's data center instead of under your

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desk.

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You still open the drawer and grab a file, but the cabinet itself, the locks, the fireproofing,

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the maintenance, that's all handled for you.

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The difference is, you never have to worry about the cabinet breaking down as your files

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works with Windows, Linux and Mac.

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Any device that supports SMB, that's the standard Windows file sharing language or NFS,

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the standard for Linux can connect.

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You access it over the internet or through a private network if you want to keep traffic

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off the public web.

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And it's fully managed.

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Microsoft handles the hardware, software updates, backups and higher availability.

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If a disk fails in their data center, they swap it without you ever seeing it.

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Most users never notice it's there, but it's a core service.

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No more late night emergency trips to the office.

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Now to understand why you'd want this, let's look at the old way first.

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The pain of traditional file servers.

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So imagine you run a small business with 15 employees.

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Somewhere in the office closet, there's a physical server.

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Maybe it's an old desktop you repurposed, or maybe it's an actual server that costs a

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few thousand dollars a few years ago.

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Either way, it's running Windows server and serving up file shares for everyone in the

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company.

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Here's the thing, hard drives fail, they always do.

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And when that drive dies, the file share goes down.

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Maybe you have a backup, maybe you don't.

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Maybe the backup has been failing silently for six months.

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That's a conversation nobody wants to have.

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Then there's the space issue, file servers fill up fast.

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Someone drops 15 gigs of vacation photos in the shared drive.

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Another department holds old project files from three years ago.

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You add storage, you either buy more hardware or spend hours reconfiguring what you have.

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Neither option is fun and patching.

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Windows server needs regular security updates, which means downtime.

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Someone has to log in on a weekend, apply the updates, cross their fingers, and hope

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the server comes back up.

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If it doesn't, you're spending Sunday afternoon troubleshooting.

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Ransomware is another worry.

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One click on the wrong email attachment and your file server gets encrypted.

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Every file is locked.

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The recovery process is painful and it assumes your backups are actually working.

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If your office has multiple locations, things get worse.

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Sharing files between branches means setting up VPNs or slow replication.

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The remote office gets a fraction of the speed the main office has.

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People complain, you spend time tuning connections.

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Here's a real example.

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A small construction company I know had 15 employees and an aging server sitting in the

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corner of the break room.

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Every time someone said the file server is slow, the owner felt that not in his stomach.

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Was it dying?

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Was it time to spend another $5,000 on hardware?

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Should he hire an IT guy just to manage one box?

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It's stressed that constant, low grade worry about a single piece of hardware is exactly

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what Azure Files removes.

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It's not just about the features, it's about not having to think about it at all.

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Azure Files takes all that overhead away.

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Let's look at how it actually works.

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How Azure Files works, SMB, NFS, and mounting.

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Azure Files uses standard protocols.

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What does that mean in plain English?

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It means you don't need special software or custom tools to connect.

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If your computer can talk to a network drive, it can talk to Azure Files.

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The Windows machines that's SMB serve a message block.

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It's the same protocol your current file server uses.

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For Linux systems, its NFS network file system both are industry standards that have been

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around for decades.

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Azure Files speaks both languages fluently.

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So how do you actually use it?

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You mount it on Windows, you map it as a drive letter, Z or S or whatever letter you want.

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On Linux, you mount it to a folder path.

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Either way, it looks and feels like local storage.

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Open file explorer, there it is.

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You can drop files just like you would to a folder on your own hard drive.

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Here's the part that surprises people.

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Data travels encrypted by default when you use SMB 3.0 or higher, which modern Windows

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and Mac OS system support.

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The connection between your computer and Azure Files is encrypted in transit.

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Nobody on the network can sniff your files as they move.

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That's a big deal for security and it's on by default.

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You can mount Azure Files shares from practically anywhere.

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From a virtual machine running in Azure obviously.

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From an on-premises server connected through VPN or ExpressRoute, even from your laptop

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over the internet if you set it up correctly.

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The file share lives in the cloud but it feels local.

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Let me give you a concrete example.

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Say your accounting team needs access to the same set of spreadsheets.

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In the old world, you'd set up a file server, configure permissions and hope the network

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doesn't go down.

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With Azure Files, you create a single file share, map it as drive Z.

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On each accounting machine and they're done.

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They never know it's in the cloud, they just see a drive letter that works.

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Authentication is handled through identity.

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Instead of managing storage account keys, those long strings that look like passwords

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on steroids, you use Azure Active Directory or your on-premises Active Directory.

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Users log in with their normal credentials.

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The same username and password they use for email.

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No extra keys to store, no shared secrets to rotate.

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Now the way Azure Files was originally set up had a twist.

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That's where the new change comes in.

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The old way.

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Storage accounts.

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Here's where things get a little technical.

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But trust me, it's worth sticking with me.

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So originally, file shares weren't their own thing in Azure.

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They lived inside something called a storage account.

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Imagine a storage account as a big container.

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Inside that container, you could put blobs for unstructured data,

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queues for messages, tables for structured data.

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And yes, you could also create file shares.

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But here's the problem, that storage account had limits.

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IOPs limits, throughput limits, capacity limits.

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And every file share inside that container had to share those limits.

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So if you had five file shares in one storage account, they were all fighting for the same pool

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of performance.

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One busy share could slow down all the others.

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Network settings worked the same way.

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Firewall rules, private endpoints, those applied to the whole storage account.

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You couldn't say this file share is only accessible from the finance department's network,

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and that file share is open to everyone.

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The network rules were all on nothing.

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Then there were the storage account keys.

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Every storage account had two access keys, and those keys gave full access to everything

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inside, every blob, every queue, every table, every file share.

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If you only needed access to one file share too bad, the key opened everything.

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Billing was another headache.

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All the costs showed up at the storage account level.

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So if you wanted to charge back to different departments, you had to do manual calculations.

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Well, the marketing teams share used about 30% of the storage, so they owe 30% of the bill.

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That gets old fast.

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Here's an analogy.

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Imagine you're renting a warehouse.

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Inside that warehouse you've got several rooms.

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But the warehouse has a single entrance, a single security guard, and a single electricity

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meter.

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Every room shares the same power, the same access rules, and the same bill.

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If one room cranks up the AC, all the other rooms get warmer.

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If you want to secure one room separately, you can't.

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Because there's only one door.

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That's what the old storage account model felt like.

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One big container with shared limits, shared security, and shared billing.

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It worked, but it wasn't elegant, especially when all you wanted was a simple file share.

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But Microsoft heard the feedback and built something better.

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The new file shares resource.

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The new file shares resource.

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So here's what changed.

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Microsoft created a brand new top level resource.

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You now create a file share directly with no storage account parent.

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It's its own thing.

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Think of it like managed disks.

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Remember how it used to work with virtual machines?

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You had to create a storage account, then create a page blob inside it, then attach that

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blob to your VM.

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It was a whole process.

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Then Microsoft introduced managed disks.

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You just create a disk.

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Done.

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No storage account.

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No page blob.

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No messing around.

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The new file shares resource works the same way.

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Behind the scenes, there's a new resource provider called Microsoft file shares.

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It's independent and standalone.

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When you create a file share now, you're not creating a child of something else.

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You're creating the resource itself.

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So what does that actually buy you?

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Let me walk through the benefits.

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First each share has its own limits, IOPS, throughput, capacity.

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They're all per share now.

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No more sharing a pool with other file shares.

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One busy share can't slow down another.

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If your engineering team is hammering their share with build artifacts, the HR department

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share keeps humming along.

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Second, network configuration is per share.

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Private endpoints, firewall rules, you set them on the individual file share.

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Want one share accessible only from the finance department's virtual network and another

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open to the whole company?

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No problem.

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They're independent.

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Third, there's no storage account key.

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Remember that all powerful key that gave access to everything gone.

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Authentication is identity based or through network rules.

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Users log in with their normal credentials.

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No shared secrets to manage.

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No keys to rotate.

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No risk of a leaked key exposing all your file shares.

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Fourth, building is per share.

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In Azure cost management, you see exactly what each file share costs.

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If you need to charge back to departments, it's right there.

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No manual calculations, no spreadsheets, no guesswork.

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Fifth, the control plane has its own quotas.

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The control plane is the layer that handles operations like creating shares, modifying them,

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deleting them, taking snapshots.

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In the old model, lots of administrators working on lots of file shares inside one storage

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account could hit management limits.

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Now each share has its own bucket for those operations.

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It's much harder to hit a limit.

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Now there's a catch.

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At general availability, this new resource is currently limited to the SSD tier and the

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NFS protocol.

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That's a specific use case.

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High performance Linux file shares, but SMB support and HDD tier are coming.

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Microsoft has been clear about that roadmap.

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So instead of managing a big bucket with many shares that all share the same limits, the

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same network rules, the same keys and the same bill, now each share is its own small bucket

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with its own lock.

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Simple.

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So when does it make sense to actually use Azure files?

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When to use Azure files?

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So when does Azure files actually make sense?

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Let me walk you through the scenarios.

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First up is lift and shift.

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You've got an old application that depends on file shares.

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Maybe it's a legacy business app.

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Maybe it's a custom tool your team built years ago.

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Normally moving that to the cloud means rewriting code, changing configurations, rethinking

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how data gets accessed.

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With Azure files though you don't touch a single line of code.

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The app just sees a network drive.

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It doesn't care if that drive lives in your office closet or inside a Microsoft data center,

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same protocol, same behavior.

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That's the whole point.

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Another big use case is sharing configuration files, logs or data across multiple virtual

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machines.

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So you have a cluster of web servers.

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They all need the same config.

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Instead of copying files to each VM and hoping they stay in sync, you mount one Azure

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file share on every server.

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Change one file.

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Every server sees it instantly.

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No more chasing mismatched versions.

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Development and testing teams love this too.

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You can spin up a file share in minutes, use it for a week, then delete it when you're done.

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No hardware to buy, no server to decommission.

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For anyone who needs temporary shared storage, this is a huge time saver.

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Then there's the hybrid cloud scenario.

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Azure file syncs lets you cache files on a local server while keeping Azure files as

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the source of truth.

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Your on-premises users get local performance for the files they access most.

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Meanwhile, the cloud copy stays up to date automatically.

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Branch officers love this, remote teams love this.

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It gives you the best of both worlds without the headache.

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But Azure files isn't the answer for everything.

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Don't use it for high performance databases.

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If you need database-level speed, go with Azure SQL or manage disks.

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Azure files is a file share, not a database engine.

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It's optimized for file access patterns, not transactional workloads.

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There are different tools for different jobs.

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Don't use it where SharePoint or Microsoft Teams already covers the need.

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If you're sharing documents that people edit together in real time, SharePoint is the

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better fit.

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You get version history, co-authoring, and deep integration with the rest of Microsoft 365.

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Azure files is for the scenarios where SharePoint doesn't quite work.

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And don't use it for applications that need custom file system features like symbolic links,

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hard links, or extended attributes.

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Azure files handle standard file system behavior just fine, but it doesn't support every edge

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case.

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Know your requirements before you commit.

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Let me give you a real world example.

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A construction company has field offices in three cities.

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Each office needs access to the same set of blueprints, contracts, and inspection reports.

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In the old setup, they'd have a server at headquarters.

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And remote workers would connect through a slow VPN.

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Opening a blueprint could take minutes.

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With Azure files, they create a single share in the cloud.

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Every office mounted, blueprints open in seconds.

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Contracts are always the latest version.

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Know VPN required.

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No server to maintain.

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It just works.

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But performance and security matter too, so let's touch on those.

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Performance, security, and cost at a glance.

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It starts with performance.

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If you need speed, the premium tier runs on SSDs and delivers single millisecond latency.

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We're talking up to 102,400 IOPS per share with the provisioned V2 model.

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That's serious throughput for demanding workloads.

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The standard tier uses regular hard drives.

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It's slower but much cheaper.

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Perfect for archival storage or general file sharing, where speed isn't critical.

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Microsoft recently added metadata caching for SSD shares.

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This cuts latency by up to 55% when you're listing directories or browsing folders.

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If your workflow involves lots of small files and frequent folder navigation, this makes a

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noticeable difference.

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Now security.

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Azure files has encryption at rest enabled by default.

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Every byte you write gets encrypted before it hits the disk.

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You don't have to configure anything.

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It's just on encryption in transit is also on by default for SMB 3.0 and higher.

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Your data stays encrypted while traveling between your computer and the cloud.

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Nobody on the network can read it.

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Microsoft recommends using identity-based access instead of storage account keys.

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That means your user is logging with their normal work credentials.

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The same ones they use for email and teams.

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No shared keys to manage, no risk of a key leaking.

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For network isolation you have options.

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Private endpoints give your file share a private IP address inside your own virtual network.

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Service endpoints keep traffic on the Microsoft backbone.

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Firewall rules let you restrict access to specific IP ranges.

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You can layer these however you like and there's Microsoft Defender for storage.

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It monitors your file shares for suspicious activity.

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If someone uploads malware through the rest API, Defender can catch it.

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It's an extra layer of protection for sensitive environments.

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Cost wise the premium tier uses provisioned pricing.

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You reserve a certain amount of capacity, IOPS and throughput and you pay for what you reserve.

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Standard is pay as you go.

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You only pay for the storage you actually use.

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If your workloads are predictable, Azure files reservations can save you up to 36%.

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Commit to one or three years and Microsoft gives you a discount.

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No performance impact, just lower bills.

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One practical tip.

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Keep your compute and storage in the same Azure region.

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This region data transfer costs add up fast.

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Collocate your VMs and your file shares and you avoid those egress charges entirely.

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That's a lot of info.

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Let me tie it together.

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The big picture, why this matters.

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Here's the core idea.

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The old storage account model made you manage all that complexity even when all you wanted

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was a simple file share.

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You needed to understand storage accounts, shared limits, network rules that applied to

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everything and billing that lumped everything together.

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It was like renting a whole building just to use one room.

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The new file shares resource fixes that.

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Now you're renting just that room.

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One file share, one set of limits, one network configuration, one bill, no extra baggage.

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For beginners, this changes everything.

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You can start with a single file share in minutes.

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No deep Azure knowledge required, created, mounted and you're done.

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For IT pros, it's even better.

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Granular control over each share.

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Better security because there's no all powerful storage account key.

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Simpler billing because each share shows up separately in cost reports.

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And remember, Azure files isn't just a drive in the sky.

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It connects to Azure backup for automated backups.

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It works with Azure file sync for hybrid scenarios.

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And it integrates with Microsoft Defender for security monitoring.

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That's the larger ecosystem at work.

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So what should you do with this info?

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Azure files gives you a cloud file server without the server hassle.

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And the new standalone file shares resource makes it even easier.

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No storage accounts, no shared limits, no complex billing.

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If you're still running a physical file server, this is your sign to try Azure files.

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Start small, create a single share for a test team and see how it feels.

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Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and

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share this with someone who manages backups on a Friday afternoon.