Quick Bites:
- The blog compares Amazon S3 and Azure Blob Storage, two popular cloud storage solutions, focusing on performance, scalability, security, management, pricing, and other key aspects
- It highlights their similarities and differences, emphasizing that both platforms offer reliable storage options suitable for various needs
- The article advises readers to stick with their current cloud provider or choose based on specific requirements, such as pricing, durability, or replication features
- While it does not explicitly recommend one over the other, it emphasizes the importance of considering factors beyond pricing, such as scalability, security, and performance, when choosing a cloud storage solution
Why use Blob storage or AWS S3?
Anyone who has never heard of Blob Storage will probably google it to find out exactly what it is.
Blob Storage is the solution for storing objects in the Cloud. It’s an optimal solution to store massive amounts of unstructured data. Unstructured data is data that does not conform to a particular data model or predefined definitions, such as text or binary data.
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Once stored in the Blob, the data is accessible worldwide. Moreover, it is even more powerful because you can manipulate Blobs using code.
BDRSuite provides support for using Blob data (Azure) or S3 (AWS). But why should you use this type of storage? Blob storage is particularly suitable for different data types you want to store securely but do not need to be edited and read continuously. So it is ideal for storing documents, archival copies of data, and backup data.
Files can easily be uploaded to the Cloud and read again similarly. No specific tooling is required.
You’re mistaken if you think you need to make concessions on security and availability. Microsoft (Azure Blob) and Amazon (S3) offer extensive feature sets.
5 key benefits of using Amazon S3 / Azure Blob storage:
- Extremely suitable for backup data
- Reliable security
- Availability
- Very low cost
- Easy data migration
- Easy management
But when would you choose Azure Blob, and when would you choose AWS S3? To anticipate the conclusion a little bit… stay with your current Cloud provider (if you are already using it) or specifically choose Azure or AWS if you require a specific feature or another feature that you feel is important. This article will help you decide.
Both Azure Blob and AWS S3 have essentially the same feature set. However, I specifically highlight the things that are different, in this article.
In Amazon S3, data gets stored as objects in S3 buckets. An object could be considered to be any fundamental entity consisting of both object data and metadata.
Azure Blob is the object storage solution offered by Microsoft. It allows users to store enormous amounts of unstructured data (any type of text or binary data, such as documents, media files, app installers etc) in Microsoft’s Azure Cloud platform.
Performance
Azure published some performance targets for Azure Blob Storage :
- For a single Blob, up to 60 MB per second, or up to 500 requests per second
- Per storage account total request rate: Up to 20.000 IOPS @ 1KB block size
- LRS : 20 Gbps ingress, 30 Gbps egress per account
- GRS : 10 Gbps ingress, 20 Gbps egress per account
Amazon has not (or very little) published performance targets for AWS S3. However, the performance for their purposes (archive, backup data etc.) is more than sufficient! I haven’t heard from people suffering from performance issues using S3 (or Blob) storage.
There is also specialized tooling available from other vendors to monitor the S3 and Blob performance. There are also guidelines and best practices available for both AWS and Microsoft.
Both AWS S3 and Azure Blob provide more than enough performance although Microsoft is somewhat more open about it
Scalability
Azure has a limit of 100 Storage accounts per subscription. Each Storage account has a limit of 500 TB. Each Blob container has a limit of 500 TB. 195 GB maximum per block Blob, maximum of 50.000 blocks per block Blob. Each block has a maximum of 4 MB. (Note: the limit of 100 Storage Accounts can be increased upon request)
S3 has a maximum of 100 buckets per account, 5 TB per object, and 5 GB per PUT operation.
Both AWS S3 and Azure Blob provide all the necessary options to scale when needed (for example a growth of your amount of storage data).
Security & compliance
You can add security layers to your stored data and restrict unauthorized access with encryption features and access tools such as AWS Identity and Access Management or Azure Active Directory.
When you already use (Azure) Active Directory in your environment this can be an advantage.
Both Azure Blob and AWS S3 meet all regular compliance requirements, like PCI DSS, HITRUST, HIPAA, ISO 27001/27017/27018, CCPA/GDPR en FedRAMP
Management
Both Azure and AWS S3 can be managed using multiple ways :
- GUI (Graphical User Interface)
- CLI (Command Line Interface)
- API (Application Program Interface)
Both AWS S3 and Blob provide the same options. Some people say Azure Blob is easier to configure but that can be personal.
Pricing
The cost of Blob/S3 storage depends on a number of aspects:
- Storage Pricing
- Volume of data stored per month
- Quantity and type of operations performed
- Data transfer costs
- Data redundancy options
- Cost to further process the data
Azure has a light advantage. $0.018 per GB per month for data stored in a single zone when using Hierarchical Namespace (NFS v3.0 Protocol) or $0.0.184 per GB per month for data stored in a Single Zone when using Flat Namespace. For Multi Zone prices start at $0.0.23 for both types of file structure (Hierarchical and Flat). Reserved capacity pricing is available. Premium tier is available for IO intensive workloads. Azure Blob is charged on a per-minute basis while AWS S3 is chargeable on an hourly basis.
AWS S3 costs $0.023 per GB per month for data stored in buckets. Cost decreases per GB with an increase in usage. For the cost of Data Stored, AWS S3 is a little more expensive than Azure Cool Blob Storage LRS, but AWS S3-IA is nearly 50% cheaper than Azure Cool Blob Storage GRS and RA-GRS. So I advise you to check all your requirements before looking at the price. You can easily check the pricing in your situation, both Azure as well as AWS have a cost calculator, check them out!
Azure : https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/calculator/
AWS: https: //https://calculator.aws/#/?nc2=h_ql_pr_calc
Things to keep in mind
- The data stored in the Azure GRS tier that is replicated to other regions is only available to you in a failover state
- Azure’s Geo-redundant Storage (GRS) only replicates your data in a SINGLE zone of two different regions. In contrast, Azure’s Geo-zone Redundant Storage (GZRS) replicates within three zones in the primary region and 1 in the secondary region
- Azure Blob Storage Archive requires a minimum period of 180 days for files
- Since lower-frequency-tiers of storage are used for backup data, it is valuable for the backup software to minimize the number of transactions and amount of data stored by deduplicating data before transferring it to the lower-frequency-access storage. This is something that BDRSuite does already
- On Amazon S3, you can also replicate your data cross-region, but it’s a feature that needs enabling and can double your raw storage costs. – Besides tiers, Azure has more varied types and versions of storage compared to AWS
Conclusion
If you are currently embedded in the Azure or AWS ecosystem for other reasons, there is very little reason to switch to another Cloud provider. It adds unnecessary complexity, and both provide more or less the same functionality.
AWS S3 Infrequent Access and Azure Cool Blob Storage are both object storage tiers appropriate for backup and similar uses. Preferably where you store a large amount of data, access it infrequently, but can’t wait a long time to access it when needed. In addition, they both lower the (already low) costs by using Vembu BDRSuite backup software
AWS lets you set the access-frequency tier for each object, whereas Azure requires all objects in a storage account to be at the same tier. So if you are using Azure Blob Storage as your BDRSuite backup target, it would be wise to create a dedicated Cool Blob storage account for backup data and never use it for primary storage.
AWS S3-IA and Azure Blob offer similar Availability SLAs, with Azure RA-GRS read requests having an additional 0.9% advantage. Performance and scalability of AWS S3-IA and Azure match that of their respective higher frequency-access-tier, which is good news for short backup windows and rapid restores when you need it most. Note that BDRSuite de-duplicates backup data prior to transferring it, which further reduces backup window and restore time.
Both AWS S3 and Azure Blob Storage offer encryption and key management for data pre-flight and in-flight, with Azure a little behind in not offering post-flight encryption. BDRSuite also encrypts backup data prior to transferring it to the object storage (pre-flight), but BDRSuite goes further by deduplicating the data before encrypting it to minimize the transfer and storage costs.
It’s possible to reduce the frequency-access-tier of an AWS S3 object (fee per request and must have existed for 30 days at current tier) or an Azure Hot Blob Storage account (free). AWS does offer an automatic lifecycle management tool. For many of BDRSuite on-prem server/endpoint backup customers, it would be best to back-up directly to the lower-frequency-access tier; whereas for cloud server backup scenarios it might be best for BDRSuite to create a higher-frequency-access snapshot for replication purposes and then migrate that to a lower-frequency-access tier.
Whether AWS S3-IA or Azure Blob provides more effective pricing for you should be determined on a case-by-case basis. But it’s certain that both further lower the cost of using their object storage for backup. BDRSuite users should consider which public cloud service offers the right capabilities and cost for use as a backup target and long-term retention. Strongly consider Azure Blob Storage over Amazon S3 if
- You use MBCS file formats or need Azure’s more durable object storage, which promises 16 9’s of durability in its Geo-Redundant Storage tier (GRS)
- You want to use storage types that automatically replicate your data cross-region
Both platforms do exceptionally well compared to specialized storage providers in “eventing” (e.g. triggering AWS Lambda or Azure Functions off of storage events)
Both AWS as Azure provide a fantastic developer API, including the use of command line and library utilities and don’t forget the Portal interface. These services are strongly integrated into the rest of their Cloud portfolio and provide a cost-effective solution for storing large amounts of data compared to other storage solutions.
Don’t focus just on pricing only.. scalability, security and performance are the other key aspects to keep in mind. (These are also the major components that have a significant price impact).
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