A multinational corporation is migrating its on-premises legacy applications to Azure. Many of these applications rely on traditional file shares for storing critical business documents and unstructured data. The security team requires a solution that provides high availability, disaster recovery, and granular, identity-based access control for these file shares directly from Azure, without requiring complex VPN configurations for every user or application. The solution must integrate seamlessly with Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) for authentication. Which Azure storage solution should the architect recommend?
- AAzure Files with Azure Active Directory Domain Services (Azure AD DS) authentication
- BAzure Data Lake Storage Gen2
- CAzure Blob Storage
- DAzure NetApp Files
Show answer & explanationAnswer & explanation
Correct answer: A. Azure Files with Azure Active Directory Domain Services (Azure AD DS) authentication
Azure Files with Azure AD DS authentication provides fully managed file shares that can be accessed via SMB or NFS, integrating directly with Azure AD for identity-based access control. This allows legacy applications to use familiar file share protocols while leveraging Azure AD for authentication without complex VPNs for every user, fulfilling the requirements.
Why the other options are wrong
- B. Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 is optimized for big data analytics workloads and offers hierarchical namespaces, but it is primarily accessed via Hadoop-compatible file systems or REST APIs, not traditional SMB/NFS file shares for legacy applications.
- C. Azure Blob Storage is object storage, not a traditional file share, and typically accessed via REST APIs, not SMB/NFS, making it unsuitable for legacy file share applications.
- D. Azure NetApp Files provides high-performance file storage for demanding enterprise workloads, including SMB/NFS, but Azure Files with Azure AD DS is a more direct and often simpler solution for standard legacy file share migrations with Azure AD integration.
Azure Files with Azure AD DS authentication
A managed file share service in Azure that provides cloud file shares accessible via industry-standard SMB or NFS protocols, with support for identity-based authentication using Azure Active Directory Domain Services.
- Provides SMB/NFS file shares for lift-and-shift of legacy applications.
- Enables granular, identity-based access control using Azure AD DS.
- Offers high availability and disaster recovery for file data.
Memory trick: Azure Files with AD DS makes old file shares feel right at home in the cloud, using familiar IDs.