Azure Blob Storage

Score9.6 out of 10

83 Reviews and Ratings

Community insights

TrustRadius Insights for Azure Blob Storage are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.

Pros

Ease of Use: Users have praised the AWS S3-compatible API for its intuitive interface, which simplifies tasks through features like drag and drop functionality, making data management more efficient and user-friendly. They find the seamless navigation and accessibility beneficial for various workflows.

Cost-Effectiveness: Reviewers appreciate the budget-friendly nature of both AWS S3-compatible API and Azure Blob Storage, highlighting their ability to provide reliable storage solutions at a reasonable cost without compromising quality. The affordability coupled with performance is a significant advantage stated by users.

Security Features: Customers value the comprehensive security measures offered by both services, including robust file encryption, secure data transfer protocols such as HTTPS, and versatile access control options like Shared Access Signatures. This level of security assurance plays a crucial role in their decision-making process.

Reviews

9 Reviews

Blob storage for central control.

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

December 18, 2024

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Blob storage to share large files and public marketing material. Using blob storage is very easy; the access settings allow you to make files public so that anyone with the URL can access them, or they can be set as private and restricted. Using Blob storage allows us to keep control of the files at the source rather than leaving our estate as with external file-sharing systems. Using a vanity URL allows the link to look more user-friendly/professional.

Pros

Hosting large files.
Vanity URLs.
Temporary access.
Different levels of access to files.

Cons

Enumeration of folders is not possible.
Spaces in file names can be problematic.

Likelihood to Recommend

Blob storage is well suited to hosting/sharing zipped files rather than several smaller files, as folder enumeration/listing is not supported. Files uploaded are case-sensitive, so users need to be educated on the correct naming convention format if they are delegating the file-sharing process outside of IT.

Verified User

Professional in Information Technology (501-1000 employees)

Vetted Review

6 years of experience

Cloud storage solution

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

January 27, 2023

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Azure Blob Storage offers an S3-compatible API for storing files on the cloud. It is easy to use with good APIs and affordable.

It works well for storing static files and as a place to store/host attachments uploaded by users in the cloud.

It also is covered by the Microsoft Defender security product also offered by Azure which provides additional security including scanning for malware.

Pros

AWS S3-compatible API
Easy to use
Cost-effective
Secure

Cons

Web UI can be somewhat clunky

Likelihood to Recommend

Hosting and serving of static files.

Using in conjunction with Azure CDN for faster delivery of content

Usage as storage for cloud-native applications (e.g. storage of uploaded user content)

Verified User

Manager in Information Technology (501-1000 employees)

Vetted Review

4 years of experience

Azure Blob Storage - a cost-effective and sensible option

Rating: 7 out of 10

Incentivized

April 25, 2022

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We used Azure Blob Storage as a staging ground for storing spreadsheet files needed for a forecasting model. We were looking for a cost-effective storage solution that could also accommodate different data types. Additionally, files that were not accessed frequently could be stored in archive storage, allowing more flexibility for the user.

Pros

Easy to work with - drag and drop
Capable of long term retention
Relatively low cost
Good for different data formats
Allows archival storage

Cons

UI needs improvement
Search for files can be slow
Additional details in documentation would be nice

Likelihood to Recommend

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.

Verified User

Contributor (501-1000 employees)

Vetted Review

1 year of experience

Azure Blob Storage is cheap and effective for backups and audit logs

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

April 1, 2022

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We're using it to store SQL Server backups and audit logs. It's relatively cheap storage and because our data already exists in Azure, there are no ingress or egress fees. It's secure, always available, and very easy to access and use.

Pros

We can backup directly from Azure VMs running SQL Server, no copying around.
We can store SQL Audit logs directly in Azure Storage, no copying around.

Cons

So far we haven't run into anything that's a problem for us or that we'd do differently.

Likelihood to Recommend

As mentioned earlier, we backup directly from our SQL Servers running on VMs to our Azure Blob Storage accounts and we have SQL Server Audits set to write directly to Azure Blob Storage. Azure Storage Explorer makes it drag and drop simple to copy files around/download them.

Verified User

Employee in Information Technology (1001-5000 employees)

Vetted Review

5 years of experience

Robust, Scalable and Secure Storage

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

March 26, 2022

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Azure Blob Storage as a centralized location for storing Customer's documents (attachment) specific to a lead/cases/complaints/customer 360 module implemented using Dynamics 365. We also Azure Blob Storage for storing customers' data, which we then use for generating Power BI Reports. Earlier these were stored either in the respective applications or some on-premise-based solutions.

Pros

Ease of use both through Azure Portal as well as API.
Cost-effective solution for storing a large amount of data compared to other storage solutions.
Scalability, Security, and Performance are the other key aspects of Azure Blob Storage that are easily manageable through Admin Console.

Cons

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.

Likelihood to Recommend

If an organization is already using Azure Cloud or Microsoft Office Products using Azure Blob for all their storage need is a no-brainer considering its seamless integration with all the different Microsoft Products. Those who are not into Microsoft Azure Platform can still compare it with Google, Azure, or any other Cloud Storage solutions before deciding on Azure Blob Storage.

Verified User

Consultant in Information Technology (5001-10,000 employees)

Vetted Review

5 years of experience

Gets the job done

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

March 26, 2022

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Azure Blob Storage is equivalent to Amazon's S3, but better because it supports HTTPS. It lets us host files of any size and automatically replicates them across several regions. It offers various tiers of storage so we can choose the price/performance we want based on our business requirements. It has robust access controls to ensure only the correct program/person accesses the files.

Pros

Flexible access control with Shared Access Signatures.
Encryption of files.
Serving files encrypted in transit (HTTPS).

Cons

Would be nice if it offered an S3 API for easier portability.
Would be nice if it was cheaper.

Likelihood to Recommend

Azure Blob Storage is great for storing files of all types and making them accessible anywhere across the world. Shared access signatures can provide temporary access to a file, which is nice when compared to competitors like S3 since the access control is embedded in the URL, rather than needing to use an AWS identity.

Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology (5001-10,000 employees)

Vetted Review

5 years of experience

Azure Blob Storage and Panzura - A win for the civil engineering field

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

February 24, 2020

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We currently use Azure Blob Storage to back-end our Panzura implementation. We keep Azure Blob Storage files as our true source of data and Panzura file caching devices at each location that has a subset of our data. It houses all of our critical business files and does it for a substantial decrease in costs vs. our old on-prem storage. This is the primary solution we use for our core business and is used across all departments.

Pros

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.

Cons

Unstructured data makes it harder to conceptualize what we have but with partners like Panzura that has been a non-issue for us.
Not always easy to understand the different models or tiers you can pick from when purchasing.

Likelihood to Recommend

The only real use case we have is with caching devices using blob storage as the backend. Azure Blob Storage is phenomenal for that. Trying to eliminate your file server to use this may not go as well, though. Microsoft has other products meant to fill that option.

Verified User

Manager in Information Technology (501-1000 employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience

Ease of use and efficiency makes Azure Blob a win!

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

January 17, 2020

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Azure storage to handle data ingestion and storage for some BI reporting. A lot of the heavy lifting is done via some of the great Powershell commands via Azure. The ease of use and the ability to -flag upload file sizes really are useful. It has also been an excellent way for us to share data with not only internal users but also customers.

Pros

Ease of use.
Efficient in data ingestion.

Cons

Documentation for Powershell v10.
File transfer size starting larger than 4mb.

Likelihood to Recommend

It fits exactly what we need it to do once we pieced together documentation from multiple sources. The data ingress and egress have fit our business model so far. If you are pulling or pushing large sets of data, Powershell v10 allows you to flag data transfer sizes to cut down on some of the cost if you have a large enough data pipe to handle the transfer speeds. There are some limitations on Blob storage size but we are far off with our projects that this is not a problem for us. Make sure to look at these Blob limits if you are going to be moving extremely large data sets.

Verified User

Employee in Information Technology (11-50 employees)

Vetted Review

2 years of experience

Azure Blob Storage - It's worth using in your environment

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

November 8, 2019

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Azure Blob storage is currently used in various ways at our company.

First, like cloud storage for various Azure SaaS platforms. Things like managed SQL instances and data lake storage for Azure AI / ML. It is useful in that it is tiered, so you can use hot tier for these use cases.

Secondly, a more common use is to use the cold and archive tiers as a cheap location to store long-term backups and archives. We think of it as a replacement for tape offloading in our DR strategy. One thing to be away from is that the cost to bring those backups/archives back from the cloud can be very high. So this is used more as a place of last resort for disaster recovery currently, but it definitely has its place.

Pros

Tiering - Hot/Cold/Archive.
It allows you to pay for the performance you need for the task at hand.
Easily consumed and accessed.

Cons

Expensive to egress your data, especially in a true DR scenario from cold or archive tier.

Likelihood to Recommend

Well suited for newly developed micro applications that need to access data in the cloud.

Well suited for being the storage layer for SaaS offerings within the Azure Service Catalog. The integration is usually built-in.

Well suited for backup storage target for long-term RPO objectives, when the expectation of actual retrieval need is very low.

Well suited for long-term offsite archival storage.

Well suited for emergency storage needs (burst storage) for an immediate need.

Not appropriate for data that has high amounts of ingress and egress churn.

Not appropriate for applications that require ultra-low latency response time from the storage layer.

Michael Ward

Sr Systems Administrator in Information Technology at USI (5001-10,000 employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience

Loading Reviews List....

Azure Blob Storage - It's worth using in your environment

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

November 8, 2019

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Azure Blob storage is currently used in various ways at our company.

Pros

Tiering - Hot/Cold/Archive.
It allows you to pay for the performance you need for the task at hand.
Easily consumed and accessed.

Cons

Expensive to egress your data, especially in a true DR scenario from cold or archive tier.

Likelihood to Recommend

Well suited for newly developed micro applications that need to access data in the cloud.

Well suited for being the storage layer for SaaS offerings within the Azure Service Catalog. The integration is usually built-in.

Well suited for backup storage target for long-term RPO objectives, when the expectation of actual retrieval need is very low.

Well suited for long-term offsite archival storage.

Well suited for emergency storage needs (burst storage) for an immediate need.

Not appropriate for data that has high amounts of ingress and egress churn.

Not appropriate for applications that require ultra-low latency response time from the storage layer.

Michael Ward

Sr Systems Administrator in Information Technology at USI (5001-10,000 employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience