Azure Data Box

Data that is moved to Azure over the network isn't always as fast as required for organizations. With the Azure Data Box solution, you can send terabytes of data into Azure quickly. You can order this Data Box solution from the Azure portal. You will then receive a Data Box storage device with a storage capacity, which can be used to transfer the data securely.

Azure offers the following three different types of storage device:

• Data Box: This device, with 100 TB of capacity, uses standard network attached storage (NAS) protocols and common copy tools. It features AES 256-bit encryption for safer transit.
• Data Box Disk: This device had a capacity of 8 TB with SSD storage (with packs of up to 5 for a total of 40 TB). It has a USB/SATA interface and has 128-bit encryption. 
• Data Box Heavy (Preview): This is a self-contained device that is designed to lift 1 PB of data to the cloud.

You can copy this data from your servers to one of the devices and ship this back to Azure. Microsoft will then upload this data in the Azure Datacenter from the device. This entire process is tracked by the Data Box service in the Azure portal to deliver insights in all the steps of this data migration process.

This Data Box solution is well suited for scenarios where there is no or limited network connectivity and where data sizes larger than 40 TB need to be migrated. It is also an ideal solution for one-time migrations, and for initial bulk transfers, followed by incremental transfers over the network.

For the incremental transfers over the network, Azure offers the following two different services:

• Azure Data Box Gateway: Data Box Gateway is a virtual device based on a virtual machine provisioned in your virtualized environment or hypervisor. The virtual device resides in your on-premises environment and you write data to it using the Network File System (NFS) and Server Message Block (SMB) protocols. The device then transfers your data to Azure block blobs, page blobs, or Azure Files.
• Azure Data Box Edge: Azure Data box Edge is a physical device supplied by Microsoft for secure data transfer. This device resides in your on-premises environment, and you can write data to it using the NFS and SMB protocols. Data Box Edge has all the gateway capabilities of Data Box Gateway. Data Box is additionally equipped with AI-enabled edge computing capabilities that help analyze, process, or filter data as it moves to Azure block blobs, page blobs, or Azure Files.

The following diagram gives you an overview of the steps that are taken to store the data onto the device and ship it back to Azure:

We have now looked at Azure Data Box and the different methods that you can use to ship your data to Azure. This concludes this chapter.