read this mount -t nfs vs cifs already :( ?
Our requirement is that we have an application hosted in AWS using nfs-utils to mount a EFS for use ? My question is how can this be done in Azure. I know they have Azure files which works in quite similar way to EFS but as per azure documentation it is done only through cifs-util. Point is that though it will mount a Azure file share in Azure will it work without any issue or do we need to do something in our commands to make it happen?
I am not good in linux, so please pardon me if I am sounding total stupid.
Our requirement is that we have an application hosted in AWS using
nfs-utils to mount a EFS for use ? My question is how can this be done
in Azure.
Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) provides simple, scalable file storage for use with Amazon EC2 instances in the AWS Cloud.
If you want do the same thing in Azure, I think you are talking about Azure storage blob(new disk).
In Azure, we can via Azure portal to add a new disk to Azure VM as a data disk, works like add a physical data disk to a host. Then we can use fdisk to create the file system on the new partition.
We can follow this article to attach a new disk to Azure VM via Azure portal.
After that completed, we can follow this article to initialize a new data disk in Linux.
I know they have Azure files which works in quite similar way to EFS
but as per azure documentation it is done only through cifs-util.
You are right, Azure files share works like EFS, but Azure files share use Server Message Block (SMB) protocol(also known as Common Internet File System, or CIFS).
The maximum size of an Azure file share is 5 Tib, there is a quota of 20,000 open handles on a single file, and the max IOPS per share is 1000 IOPS.
We can create data disk from Azure storage blob, the maxium size of data disk is 4 Tib(we can create multiple data disks to that VM), and OS disk is 2 Tib.
AWS EFS suppoer Network file system versions 4.0 and 4.1(NFSv4) protocal.
Here a article about performance about Azure file share and Azure storage blob.
Related
In Azure, is it possible to have master VM that writes to a disk which has read-only slave replicas on other VMs?
Our app needs to download ~100GB of files when scaling to a new VM. This is loaded slowly from an external provider but we want to make it available quickly when we scale out more VMs.
I don't think you can do streaming replication (which I think is what you're asking for), or read only slave through the Azure service without implementing this yourself over network or through a relational database management system.
As of this writing, one disk cannot be connected to multiple Azure VMs (See FAQ for Managed Disks. One option would be to create a snapshot of the disk, and create a new disk from the snapshot. You could automate this via the Azure Managed Disk Service API (eg: an Azure Powershell script), and it would have to happen on a VM that isn't running.
If your data is same and doesn't change per new VM created then you can have it stored on the Azure File Storage Standard/ Premium. Then have Azure File storage attached to every new VM whenever it is created. snapshot disk will make it pretty complex. Azure Files Storage is good choice in this scenario.
I am tying to create a page blob using the storage API and add it as a disk to the Virtual Machine. Is there a way this can be done ?
Currently when I create a blob and add it as the disk , the VM fails with provisioning state failed.
It sounds like you want to create a data disk using Azure Storage SDK for Java to attach page blob as data disk for Linux VM. However, some concepts you understanded are note accurate.
Firstly, you need to create a VHD file on local environment. As references, you can try to follow the below documents to do it.
On Windows, please refer to the document Create and Use a Virtual Hard Disk on Windows 7 to create a VHD file.
On Linux or MacOS, you can install & configure QEMU/VirtualBox/KVM to create a disk image and convert it. For example, to convert a qemu image via command qemu-image convert.
For more information, please see About disks and VHDs for Azure virtual machines
Secondly, you upload the VHD file created to Azure Blob Storage as a page blob via AzCopy or follow the related section of the tutorial Creating and Uploading a Virtual Hard Disk that Contains the Linux Operating System.
Then, you can refer to the document Add a disk to a Linux VM to attach the data disk on Azure Storage.
Meanwhile, based on my understanding, I think you just want to extend the filesystem of your Linux VM. So the other solution may be suitable for your needs, which mount Azure File Storage on Linux VMs using SMB protocol. More details, please refer to How to use Azure File Storage with Linux.
Hope it helps. Any concern, please feel free to let me know.
I have just moved my web site to an Azure Virtual Machine and have been up and running since last weekend. So far I'm very happy with the results and looking forward to taking advantage of Azure further in due course.
I do have what would seem to be a pretty common scenario - and, to my surprise, I can't find an obvious solution. I have a couple of VMs - one my primary server and the other which will be suspended and ready to kick in (manually is fine) if the first one has an issue. I backup my web site to Azure Storage (my backup utility supports saving to an Azure blob). That's the good news.
I had assumed that I could somehow mount the storage blob as a drive, therefore effectively having shared storage across the two VMs. However, to my surprise, I haven't found an obvious way to do that. I have found a third party utility (Gladinet Cloud Desktop) but it seems painfully slow. As I say, I admit I just assumed this would be an easy thing to do.
So, stepping back, what is the most straightforward way to access a storage blob from multiple VMs? I really don't want to set up a private network and then set up network file sharing - that seems so old school :) and places a specific dependency on one specific VM.
Any suggestions?
Thanks.
This is now not just possible, but very easy, and it looks just like a filesystem. Check out the new Azure File Service (in preview as of this writing).
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsazurestorage/archive/2014/05/12/introducing-microsoft-azure-file-service.aspx
Quoting from the announcement:
"The Azure File service exposes file shares using the standard SMB 2.1 protocol. Applications running in Azure can now easily share files between VMs using standard and familiar file system APIs like ReadFile and WriteFile."
It is better than just an SMB drive, as the announcement goes on to mention:
"In addition, the files can also be accessed at the same time via a REST interface, which opens a variety of hybrid scenarios. Finally, Azure Files is built on the same technology as the Blob, Table, and Queue Services, which means Azure Files is able to leverage the existing availability, durability, scalability, and geo redundancy that is built into our platform."
In Azure Resource Manager "Storage Account" you can create a Network File Share that can be Mounted as a Drive to multiple VM's or to computers and devices not on Azure for both Unix, Linux and Windows.
In General, go to your Storage Account ➡ Files ➡ Create FileShare ➡ Name the Share and the Disk Space Quota ➡ Click Connect to obtain the command or windows or linux to mount the share to the respective devices. Note this ONLY WORKS for Local Redundant Storage, not Zone, not Geo Redundant.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGPJZMaSlis
The video tutorial above shows you step by step how to do this. The only restriction is needed is OS support of the SMB 3.0 protocol which Windows 8 or above does and Windows 2012 or above does. Requires Firewall Port 445 to be opened.
You can access blobs from multiple VMs. This is a very common pattern. What you can't do is mount a drive (stored in a blob) on multiple VMs simultaneously. That is, if you decide to create a VHD disk and attach it to a VM (whether Linux or Windows - doesn't matter), then the blob-backed disk is locked to a VM and that VM can then work with the vhd like it would a local file system.
If, on the other hand, you deal with blobs discretely as single objects, you can easily work with these blobs across any number of VMs.
If you're looking to do something like network sharing (e.g. SMB), you'd either need to use the Azure File Service or stage your own SMB server VM.
In the case where you absolutely must have a mounted file system, yet want to use the file system in a primary/backup fashion, you could always do something via the API to unmount from one VM and remount to another VM. This can be executed via PowerShell (Windows only) or via the cross-platform command-line interface on Linux/Mac/Windows. You'd do this if your primary VM failed for some reason.
this are good articles, I am also looking for that, hope find the right solution.
I hope you share your experience here with your choice.
Deciding when to use Azure Blobs, Azure Files, or Azure Disks
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/storage/common/storage-decide-blobs-files-disks
there are premium disks
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/managed-disks/
Manually create and use a volume with Azure disks in Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/aks/azure-disk-volume
Note : An Azure disk can only be mounted to a single pod at a time. If you need to share a persistent volume across multiple pods, use Azure Files.
Performance guidelines for SQL Server in Azure Virtual Machines
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/windows/sql/virtual-machines-windows-sql-performance
Deploy a SQL Server container in Kubernetes with Azure Kubernetes Services (AKS)
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/linux/tutorial-sql-server-containers-kubernetes?view=sql-server-2017
I currently have a Rackspace Cloud Server that I'd like to migrate to an Azure Virtual Machine. I recently got an MSDN subscription which gives me a certain level of hosting via Azure at no cost, where I'm currently paying for that level of service with Rackspace.
However, one of the nice things about Rackspace is that I can schedule nightly/weekly backups of the VM image. Is there any mechanism for doing this on Azure? I'm worried about protecting against corruption of the database (i.e. what if someone were to run an UPDATE statement and forget the WHERE clause). Is there a mechanism for this with Azure?
I know the VMs are stored as .VHD files in my local Azure storage, but the VM image is 127 gigs. Downloading that nightly even with FIOS internet isn't really going to fly as a solution.
You can perform an asynchronous blob copy to make a physical copy of a vhd. See here for REST API details. This operation is very fast within the same data center (maybe a few seconds?). You don't need to make raw REST calls though: There's a method already implemented in the Azure cross-platform command line interface, available here. The command is:
azure vm disk upload
You can also take blob snapshots, and return to a previous snapshot later. A snapshot is read-only (which you can copy from later) and takes up no space initially. However, as storage pages are changed, the snapshot grows.
One question though: why such a large VM image? Are you storing OS + data on same vhd? If so, it may make more sense to mount a separate Azure Drive (also stored in VHD in blob storage) to store data, and make independent copies / snapshots.
How would I write to a tmp/temp directory in windows azure website? I can write to a blob, but i'm using an NPM that requires me to give it file names so that it can directly write to those filenames.
Are you using Cloud Services (PaaS) or Virtual Machines (IaaS).
If PaaS, look at Windows Azure Local Storage. This option gives you up to 250gb of disk space per core. Its a great location for temporary storage of information in a way that traditional apps will be familiar with. However, its not persistent so if you put anything there you need to make sure will be available if the VM instance gets repaved, then copy it to Blob storage. Also, this storage is specific to a given role instance. So if you have two instances of the same role, they each have their own local storage buckets.
Alternatively, you can use Azure Drive, which allows you to keep the information persisted, but still doesn't allow multiple parallel writes.
If IaaS, then you can just mount a data disk to the VM and write to it directly. Data disks are already persisted to blob storage so there's little risk of data loss.
Just from my understanding and please correct me if anything wrong.
In Windows Azure Web Site, the content of your website will be stored in blob storage and mounted as a drive, which will be used for all instances your web site is using. And since it's in blob storage it's persistent. So if you need the local file system I think you can use the folders under your web site root path. But I don't think you can use the system tmp or temp folder.