Azure Elastic SAN (AES) is a new (now GA) Azure Cloud native storage service that provides scalable, resilient, easy management with rapid provisioning, high performance, and cost-effective storage. AES (figure 1) supports many workloads and computing resources. Workloads that benefit from AES include tier 1 and tier 2, such as Mission Critical, Database, and VDI, among others traditionally relying upon consolidated Storage Area Network (SAN) shared storage.
Compute resources that can use AES, including bare metal (BM) physical machines (PM), virtual machines (VM), and containers, among others, using iSCSI for access. AES is accessible by computing resources and services within the Azure Cloud in various regions (check Azure Website for specific region availability) and from on-prem core and edge locations using iSCSI. The AES management experience and value proposition are similar to traditional hardware or software-defined shared SAN storage combined with Azure cloud-based management capabilities.
Figure 1 General Concept and Use of Azure Elastic SAN (AES)
While Microsoft Azure describes AES as a cloud-native storage solution, that does not mean that AES is only for containers and other cloud-native apps or DevOPS. Rather, AES has been built for and is native to the cloud (e.g., software-defined) that can be accessed by various compute and other resources (e.g., VMs, Containers, AKS, etc) using iSCSI.
The following links are additional resources to learn about Microsoft Azure Elastic SAN (AES) and related data infrastructures and tradecraft topics.
Azure AKS (Azure Kubernetes Service) Storage Concepts
Azure Elastic SAN (AES) Documentation and Deployment Guides
Azure Elastic SAN Microsoft Blog
Azure Elastic SAN Overview
Azure Elastic SAN Performance topics
Azure Elastic SAN Pricing calculator
Azure Products by Region to see where AES is currently available
Azure Storage Offerings
Azure Virtual Machine (VM) sizes
Azure Virtual Machine (VM) types
Azure Elastic SAN General Pricing
Azure Storage Redundancy
Azure Service Level Agreements (SLA)
StorageIOBlog.com Data Box Family
StorageIOBlog.com Data Box Review
StorageIOBlog.com Data Box Test Drive
StorageIOBlog.com Hyper-V is Alive and Enhanced with Windows Server 2025
What’s New in Windows Server v.Next video from Microsoft Ignite (11/17/23)
Microsoft Windows Server 2025 Whats New
Microsoft Windows Server 2025 Preview Build Download
If NVMe is the answer, what are the questions?
NVMe Primer (or refresh), The NVMe Place.
Additional learning experiences along with common questions (and answers), are found in my Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials book.
Azure Elastic SAN (AES) is a new and now generally available shared block storage offering that is accessible using iSCSI from within Azure Cloud and on-prem environments. Even with iSCSI, AES is relatively easy to set up and use for shared storage, mainly if you are used to or currently working with hardware or software-defined SAN storage solutions.
With NVMe over TCP fabrics gaining industry and customer traction, I’m hoping and looking forward to Microsoft adding that support in the future (besides in Windows Server 2025). Currently, AES supports LRS and ZRS for redundancy, and an excellent future enhancement would be to add Geo Redundant Storage (GRS) capabilities for those who need it.
I like the option of elastic shared storage regarding performance, availability, capacity, and economic costs (PACE). Suppose you understand the value proposition of evolving from dedicated DAS to shared SAN (independent of the underlying fabric network) or are currently using some form of on-prem shared block storage. In that case, you will find AES familiar and easy to use. Granted, AES is not a solution for everything as there are roles for other block storage, including DAS such as Azure disks and VMs within Azure, along with on-prem DAS, as well as file, object, and blobs, tables, among others.
The notion that all cloud storage must be objects or blobs can be linked to those who only need, provide, or prefer those solutions. Likewise, the idea that only files, tables (database repositories), queues, or block storage are the solution to everything is tied to those who only know, prefer, provide, or require those as solutions.
The reality is that everything is not the same; thus, there is a need for various storage mediums, devices, tiers, access, and types of services, which Microsoft and Azure have done an excellent job of providing. Learn more about Microsoft Azure Elastic SAN from Cloud to Onprem here.
Ok, nuff said, for now.
Cheers Gs
Greg Schulz – Nine time Microsoft MVP Cloud and Data Center Management, VMware vExpert 2010-2018. Author of Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials (CRC Press), as well as Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press), Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier) and twitter @storageio. Courteous comments are welcome for consideration. First published on https://storageioblog.com any reproduction in whole, in part, with changes to content, without source attribution under title or without permission is forbidden.
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