Compare StorSimple with Azure File Sync and Data Box Edge data transfer options

Important

StorSimple 8000 series will reach its end-of-life in December 2022. Microsoft provides a dedicated migration service for StorSimple 8000 series volumes and their backups. It is imperative that you stop any new StorSimple deployments and begin planning your migration now.

The StorSimple Data Manager contains a dedicated migration service for your StorSimple volumes and their backups. If you want to preserve your file and folder structure, ACLs, timestamps, attributes, and backups, then Azure Files is the ideal choice. Review the migration guide.

This document provides an overview of options for on-premises data transfer to Azure, comparing: Data Box Edge vs. Azure File Sync vs. StorSimple 8000 series.

  • Data Box Edge – Data Box Edge is an on-premises network device that moves data into and out of Azure and has AI-enabled Edge compute to pre-process data during upload. Data Box Gateway is a virtual version of the device with the same data transfer capabilities.
  • Azure File Sync – Azure File Sync can be used to centralize your organization's file shares in Azure Files, while keeping the flexibility, performance, and compatibility of an on-premises file server. Azure File Sync transforms Windows Server into a quick cache of your Azure file share. General availability of Azure File Sync was announced earlier in 2018.
  • StorSimple – StorSimple is a hybrid device that helps enterprises consolidate their storage infrastructure for primary storage, data protection, archiving, and disaster recovery on a single solution by tightly integrating with Azure storage. The product lifecycle for StorSimple can be found here.

Comparison summary

StorSimple 8000 Azure File Sync Data Box Edge
Overview Tiered hybrid storage and archival General file server storage with cloud tiering and multi-site sync. Storage solution to pre-process data and send it over network to Azure.
Scenarios File server, archival, backup target File server, archival (multi-site) Data transfer, data pre-processing including ML inferencing, IoT, archival
Edge compute Not available Not available Supports running containers using Azure IoT Edge
Form factor Physical device Agent installed on Windows Server Physical device
Hardware Physical device provided from Microsoft as part of the service Customer provided Physical device provided from Microsoft as part of the service
Data format Custom format Files Blobs or Files
Protocol support iSCSI SMB, NFS SMB or NFS
Pricing StorSimple Azure File Sync Data Box Edge

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