| title | description | author | ms.service | ms.topic | ms.date | ms.author | ms.subservice |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Azure Files scalability and performance targets |
Learn about the scalability and performance targets for Azure Files, including the capacity, request rate, and inbound and outbound bandwidth limits. |
roygara |
storage |
conceptual |
05/28/2021 |
rogarana |
files |
Azure Files offers fully managed file shares in the cloud that are accessible via the SMB and NFS file system protocols. This article discusses the scalability and performance targets for Azure Files and Azure File Sync.
The scalability and performance targets listed here are high-end targets, but may be affected by other variables in your deployment. For example, the throughput for a file may also be limited by your available network bandwidth, not just the servers hosting your Azure file shares. We strongly recommend testing your usage pattern to determine whether the scalability and performance of Azure Files meet your requirements. We are also committed to increasing these limits over time.
| File share type | SMB | NFS |
|---|---|---|
| Standard file shares (GPv2), LRS/ZRS |  |
 |
| Standard file shares (GPv2), GRS/GZRS | |
|
| Premium file shares (FileStorage), LRS/ZRS | |
|
Azure file shares are deployed into storage accounts, which are top-level objects that represent a shared pool of storage. This pool of storage can be used to deploy multiple file shares. There are therefore three categories to consider: storage accounts, Azure file shares, and files.
Azure supports multiple types of storage accounts for different storage scenarios customers may have, but there are two main types of storage accounts for Azure Files. Which storage account type you need to create depends on whether you want to create a standard file share or a premium file share:
-
General purpose version 2 (GPv2) storage accounts: GPv2 storage accounts allow you to deploy Azure file shares on standard/hard disk-based (HDD-based) hardware. In addition to storing Azure file shares, GPv2 storage accounts can store other storage resources such as blob containers, queues, or tables. File shares can be deployed into the transaction optimized (default), hot, or cool tiers.
-
FileStorage storage accounts: FileStorage storage accounts allow you to deploy Azure file shares on premium/solid-state disk-based (SSD-based) hardware. FileStorage accounts can only be used to store Azure file shares; no other storage resources (blob containers, queues, tables, etc.) can be deployed in a FileStorage account.
| Attribute | GPv2 storage accounts (standard) | FileStorage storage accounts (premium) |
|---|---|---|
| Number of storage accounts per region per subscription | 250 | 250 |
| Maximum storage account capacity | 5 PiB1 | 100 TiB (provisioned) |
| Maximum number of file shares | Unlimited | Unlimited, total provisioned size of all shares must be less than max than the max storage account capacity |
| Maximum concurrent request rate | 20,000 IOPS1 | 100,000 IOPS |
| Maximum ingress |
|
4,136 MiB/sec |
| Maximum egress | 47,683 MiB/sec1 | 6,204 MiB/sec |
| Maximum number of virtual network rules | 200 | 200 |
| Maximum number of IP address rules | 200 | 200 |
| Management read operations | 800 per 5 minutes | 800 per 5 minutes |
| Management write operations | 10 per second/1200 per hour | 10 per second/1200 per hour |
| Management list operations | 100 per 5 minutes | 100 per 5 minutes |
1 General-purpose version 2 storage accounts support higher capacity limits and higher limits for ingress by request. To request an increase in account limits, contact Azure Support.
| Attribute | Standard file shares1 | Premium file shares |
|---|---|---|
| Minimum size of a file share | No minimum | 100 GiB (provisioned) |
| Provisioned size increase/decrease unit | N/A | 1 GiB |
| Maximum size of a file share |
|
100 TiB |
| Maximum number of files in a file share | No limit | No limit |
| Maximum request rate (Max IOPS) |
|
|
| Maximum ingress for a single file share |
|
40 MiB/s + 0.04 * provisioned GiB |
| Maximum egress for a single file share |
|
60 MiB/s + 0.06 * provisioned GiB |
| Maximum number of share snapshots | 200 snapshots | 200 snapshots |
| Maximum object (directories and files) name length | 2,048 characters | 2,048 characters |
| Maximum pathname component (in the path \A\B\C\D, each letter is a component) | 255 characters | 255 characters |
| Hard link limit (NFS only) | N/A | 178 |
| Maximum number of SMB Multichannel channels | N/A | 4 |
| Maximum number of stored access policies per file share | 5 | 5 |
1 The limits for standard file shares apply to all three of the tiers available for standard file shares: transaction optimized, hot, and cool.
2 Default on standard file shares is 5 TiB, see Create an Azure file share for the details on how to create file shares with 100 TiB size and increase existing standard file shares up to 100 TiB.
| Attribute | Files in standard file shares | Files in premium file shares |
|---|---|---|
| Maximum file size | 4 TiB | 4 TiB |
| Maximum concurrent request rate | 1,000 IOPS | Up to 8,0001 |
| Maximum ingress for a file | 60 MiB/sec | 200 MiB/sec (Up to 1 GiB/s with SMB Multichannel preview)2 |
| Maximum egress for a file | 60 MiB/sec | 300 MiB/sec (Up to 1 GiB/s with SMB Multichannel preview)2 |
| Maximum concurrent handles | 2,000 handles | 2,000 handles |
1 Applies to read and write IOs (typically smaller IO sizes less than or equal to 64 KiB). Metadata operations, other than reads and writes, may be lower. 2 Subject to machine network limits, available bandwidth, IO sizes, queue depth, and other factors. For details see SMB Multichannel performance.
The following table indicates the boundaries of Microsoft's testing and also indicates which targets are hard limits:
| Resource | Target | Hard limit |
|---|---|---|
| Storage Sync Services per region | 100 Storage Sync Services | Yes |
| Sync groups per Storage Sync Service | 200 sync groups | Yes |
| Registered servers per Storage Sync Service | 99 servers | Yes |
| Cloud endpoints per sync group | 1 cloud endpoint | Yes |
| Server endpoints per sync group | 100 server endpoints | Yes |
| Server endpoints per server | 30 server endpoints | Yes |
| File system objects (directories and files) per sync group | 100 million objects | No |
| Maximum number of file system objects (directories and files) in a directory (not recursive) | 5 million objects | Yes |
| Maximum object (directories and files) security descriptor size | 64 KiB | Yes |
| File size | 100 GiB | No |
| Minimum file size for a file to be tiered | V9 and newer: Based on file system cluster size (double file system cluster size). For example, if the file system cluster size is 4 KiB, the minimum file size will be 8 KiB. V8 and older: 64 KiB |
Yes |
Note
An Azure File Sync endpoint can scale up to the size of an Azure file share. If the Azure file share size limit is reached, sync will not be able to operate.
Since the Azure File Sync agent runs on a Windows Server machine that connects to the Azure file shares, the effective sync performance depends upon a number of factors in your infrastructure: Windows Server and the underlying disk configuration, network bandwidth between the server and the Azure storage, file size, total dataset size, and the activity on the dataset. Since Azure File Sync works on the file level, the performance characteristics of an Azure File Sync-based solution is better measured in the number of objects (files and directories) processed per second.
For Azure File Sync, performance is critical in two stages:
- Initial one-time provisioning: To optimize performance on initial provisioning, refer to Onboarding with Azure File Sync for the optimal deployment details.
- Ongoing sync: After the data is initially seeded in the Azure file shares, Azure File Sync keeps multiple endpoints in sync.
To help you plan your deployment for each of the stages, below are the results observed during the internal testing on a system with a config
| System configuration | Details |
|---|---|
| CPU | 64 Virtual Cores with 64 MiB L3 cache |
| Memory | 128 GiB |
| Disk | SAS disks with RAID 10 with battery backed cache |
| Network | 1 Gbps Network |
| Workload | General Purpose File Server |
| Initial one-time provisioning | Details |
|---|---|
| Number of objects | 25 million objects |
| Dataset Size | ~4.7 TiB |
| Average File Size | ~200 KiB (Largest File: 100 GiB) |
| Initial cloud change enumeration | 20 objects per second |
| Upload Throughput | 20 objects per second per sync group |
| Namespace Download Throughput | 400 objects per second |
Initial cloud change enumeration: When a new sync group is created, initial cloud change enumeration is the first step that will execute. In this process, the system will enumerate all the items in the Azure File Share. During this process, there will be no sync activity i.e. no items will be downloaded from cloud endpoint to server endpoint and no items will be uploaded from server endpoint to cloud endpoint. Sync activity will resume once initial cloud change enumeration completes. The rate of performance is 20 objects per second. Customers can estimate the time it will take to complete initial cloud change enumeration by determining the number of items in the cloud share and using the following formulae to get the time in days.
Time (in days) for initial cloud enumeration = (Number of objects in cloud endpoint)/(20 * 60 * 60 * 24)
Initial sync of data from Windows Server to Azure File share:Many Azure File Sync deployments start with an empty Azure file share because all the data is on the Windows Server. In these cases, the initial cloud change enumeration is fast and the majority of time will be spent syncing changes from the Windows Server into the Azure file share(s).
While sync uploads data to the Azure file share, there is no downtime on the local file server, and administrators can setup network limits to restrict the amount of bandwidth used for background data upload.
Initial sync is typically limited by the initial upload rate of 20 files per second per sync group. Customers can estimate the time to upload all their data to Azure using the following formulae to get time in days:
Time (in days) for uploading files to a sync group = (Number of objects in server endpoint)/(20 * 60 * 60 * 24)
Splitting your data into multiple server endpoints and sync groups can speed up this initial data upload, because the upload can be done in parallel for multiple sync groups at a rate of 20 items per second each. So, two sync groups would be running at a combined rate of 40 items per second. The total time to complete would be the time estimate for the sync group with the most files to sync.
Namespace download throughput When a new server endpoint is added to an existing sync group, the Azure File Sync agent does not download any of the file content from the cloud endpoint. It first syncs the full namespace and then triggers background recall to download the files, either in their entirety or, if cloud tiering is enabled, to the cloud tiering policy set on the server endpoint.
| Ongoing sync | Details |
|---|---|
| Number of objects synced | 125,000 objects (~1% churn) |
| Dataset Size | 50 GiB |
| Average File Size | ~500 KiB |
| Upload Throughput | 20 objects per second per sync group |
| Full Download Throughput* | 60 objects per second |
*If cloud tiering is enabled, you are likely to observe better performance as only some of the file data is downloaded. Azure File Sync only downloads the data of cached files when they are changed on any of the endpoints. For any tiered or newly created files, the agent does not download the file data, and instead only syncs the namespace to all the server endpoints. The agent also supports partial downloads of tiered files as they are accessed by the user.
Note
The numbers above are not an indication of the performance that you will experience. The actual performance will depend on multiple factors as outlined in the beginning of this section.
As a general guide for your deployment, you should keep a few things in mind:
- The object throughput approximately scales in proportion to the number of sync groups on the server. Splitting data into multiple sync groups on a server yields better throughput, which is also limited by the server and network.
- The object throughput is inversely proportional to the MiB per second throughput. For smaller files, you will experience higher throughput in terms of the number of objects processed per second, but lower MiB per second throughput. Conversely, for larger files, you will get fewer objects processed per second, but higher MiB per second throughput. The MiB per second throughput is limited by the Azure Files scale targets.