Microsoft's Blob Storage system on Azure is designed to make unstructured data available to customers anywhere through REST-based object storage.
$0.01
per GB/per month
Pure Storage FlashBlade
Score 9.9 out of 10
N/A
Pure Storage offers FlashBlade, a scale-out file and object storage – architected to consolidate complex data silos (like backup appliances and data lakes) while accelerating tomorrow's discoveries and insights.
Azure Blob Storage is well suited for cases where you are working with different data formats and looking for cost-effective storage solutions based on access frequency. Another area of strength is the encryption of data at rest, and encryption can be managed on your own. However, it may not be appropriate for transferring large data very fast.
Pure Storage FlashBlade is best for companies that want their data stored and secure. The big storage capacity and cloud integration secure our data and ensure no third-party access without authorization. It provides us a secure data storage services for our objects. Fast and easy to install and easy to use.
Reduced cost. We were able to reduce our storage infrastructure by several hundred terabytes by consolidating redundant copies and dedupe/compression on files.
Extremely high level of redundancy. We can replicate data in a variety of ways that we would never have been capable of on our own hardware.
If we are transferring huge amount of data (outbound), it can get quite expensive.
With new features being added constantly, although a good thing, at times it becomes difficult to keep up with the changes. Documentation needs to keep UpToDate and should include best practices.
Performance can be improved especially when it comes to cold storage.
When reporting out a user has exceeded there quote, it only references the UID. It would certainly be nice it calls out the UID name that is clearly present in the Dashboard.
The ability to determine a snapshot total size would be helpful.
Proactive reachout to discuss new versions and assist in planning the upgrade would be a key win.
Blob storage is fairly simple, with several different options/settings that can be configured. The file explorer has enhanced its usability. Some areas could be improved, such as providing more details or stats on how many times a file has been accessed. It is an obvious choice if you're already using Azure/Entra.
Documentation sometimes appears to be out of date or not fully documented properly with new releases. It is like documentation comes out for a specific version and is quickly out of date. Another issue is documentation is scarce on new releases and only seems to get properly updated (and sometimes is still wrong) once enough people hit the forums to complain.
Without exception, the contacts with support have been quick and extremely knowledgeable. I do not fear getting an underqualified engineer to assess or work on my arrays. In addition to this support structure, the sales engineers are top notch as well.
Blob storage lets us control the file source/hosting and retain everything within our Microsoft ecosystem. Blob is less feature-rich than some of the other products. Still, we consider it as a value-added product included within our environment, and alternative products are not needed for our requirements. Keeping the hosting within our tenant locale is vital to us.
Pure Storage FlashBlade is in our experience far faster, performance-wise, compared to its close competitors. However, if you factor in any packages you currently have with IBM or AWS for example, you can get more value for money for your data requirements. However, if performance is a must, the increased cost is not an issue.
Pure has greatly narrowed the performance gap between file storage and fiber channel block storage with FlashBlade. Exotic file systems and costly FC fabrics are no longer needed to run performant storage.
Training is not required for a storage admin who has never touched a Pure array. Everything is where you would expect to find it.
