Azure Elastic SAN for High-Performance Workloads

Overview

As businesses shift their critical workloads to the cloud, storage needs have become more complex. Applications like databases, virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems demand fast, reliable, and scalable block storage. Traditional SAN (Storage Area Network) systems are often expensive, difficult to manage, and lack the elasticity needed for cloud-native environments.

To address this gap, Microsoft introduced Azure Elastic SAN, a fully managed, cloud-native SAN solution designed for scale, performance, and simplicity.

Azure Elastic SAN

Azure Elastic SAN (Elastic Storage Area Network) is a cloud-native block storage offering that brings the power and flexibility of a traditional SAN to Azure. It delivers high-throughput, low-latency block storage for Azure Virtual Machines (VMs), ideal for IOPS-intensive and mission-critical workloads.

Elastic SAN simplifies the deployment and scaling of SAN-like infrastructure by abstracting the complexities of hardware management. It allows businesses to provision storage at scale, assign volumes to multiple VMs, and manage everything through a single Azure interface.

Why Use Azure Elastic SAN?

Azure Elastic SAN provides several key benefits:

• Scalability: Scale performance and capacity independently to meet workload demands.
• Performance: Delivers high IOPS and throughput, supporting latency-sensitive workloads.
• Simplified Management: Centralized control of volumes, volume groups, and SAN resources.
• iSCSI Support: Enables block-level access using the standard iSCSI protocol.
• High Availability: Offers zonal redundancy to protect against regional failures.
• Security: Supports private endpoints, role-based access control (RBAC), and encryption.
• Cost Efficiency: Flexible pricing with pay-as-you-go billing based on provisioned capacity and performance.

These features make Elastic SAN suitable for various use cases, from running large relational databases to supporting large-scale virtual desktop environments.

Understanding Azure Elastic SAN Resources

Azure Elastic SAN (Storage Area Network) provides scalable, high-performance storage designed for mission-critical workloads. Within each Elastic SAN deployment, there are two core internal components:

• Volume Groups: These serve as organizational units within the SAN, grouping multiple volumes based on application or workload needs.
• Volumes: These are the actual storage units used by your applications. Each volume in a group can be individually managed and provisioned based on performance or capacity requirements.

The structure of Azure Elastic SAN closely mirrors traditional on-premises SAN architecture, making it easier for enterprises to transition their workloads to the cloud. The following diagram illustrates how Azure Elastic SAN components correspond to those in a traditional on-premises SAN environment.

Ref image:https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/storage/elastic-san/elastic-san-introduction

Common Use Cases

Azure Elastic SAN is ideal for a variety of enterprise workloads:

1. Databases (SQL Server, Oracle, PostgreSQL):

Databases require consistent latency and high IOPS. Elastic SAN provides the storage backbone for large OLTP and OLAP systems with minimal performance bottlenecks.

2. Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI):

Elastic SAN supports hundreds or thousands of VMs accessing shared storage. This is critical for large-scale VDI deployments that need fast access to user profiles and app data.

3. SAP and ERP Systems:

ERP applications require reliable and high-throughput storage. Elastic SAN ensures high availability and zonal redundancy for such critical systems.

4. Backup and Disaster Recovery:

With its high scalability and performance, Elastic SAN is well-suited for backup storage and disaster recovery scenarios that require rapid data restoration.

5. High-Performance Computing (HPC):

Elastic SAN handles the intensive I/O patterns of HPC workloads, including those in analytics, modeling, and simulation.

Key Differences from Other Azure Storage Services

While Azure provides various storage solutions like Managed Disks, Azure NetApp Files, and Blob Storage, Elastic SAN stands out in several ways:

• Managed Disks are tied to individual VMs, while Elastic SAN allows shared access to multiple VMs.
• Azure NetApp Files is optimized for file workloads, whereas Elastic SAN is designed for block-level access.
• Blob Storage is ideal for object data; Elastic SAN is best for low-latency, structured I/O patterns.

Elastic SAN fills the gap for customers looking to replicate the behavior of an on-premises SAN in the cloud, with Azure’s added flexibility and scale.

Conclusion

Azure Elastic SAN provides a powerful backbone for your cloud workloads, whether you’re running databases, VDI environments, or mission-critical apps.

With centralized control, elastic scaling, and seamless integration with Azure VMs, it’s an ideal solution for organizations migrating complex storage environments to the cloud. By choosing Azure Elastic SAN, you get the performance of enterprise SANs with the agility of the cloud, without the management burden.

Drop a query if you have any questions regarding Azure Elastic SAN and we will get back to you quickly.

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