This article describes the procedure to onboard Azure file share as NAS share on the management console.
❗ Important
Backing up your Azure Files involves I/O operations, which are billed according to Azure's pricing structure. For a detailed breakdown of these charges, refer to the Azure File Pricing documentation.
Azure storage offers different performance tiers. The cost implications vary based on your Storage account performance tiers.
Procedure
Check prerequisites for the NAS proxy.
Download, install, and activate the NAS proxy on a Windows-based OS hosted as an Azure VM.
To use an Azure file share with Windows, it must be accessed via its UNC path.
Check the Azure file share is accessible with File Explorer:
Open File Explorer.
Navigate to This PC and select Map network drive.
Select the drive letter and enter the UNC path: For example:
\\anexampleaccountname.file.core.windows.net\example-share-name.Use the storage account name prepended with AZURE\ as the username and a storage account key as the password.
Select/Create credential and use the storage account name prepended with AZURE\ as the username and a storage account key as the password.
Process to capture Username and Password (Account key):
Open Azure portal.
Open Storage Account blade.
Select File shares.
Select the file share you'd like to mount.
Select Connect.
Select the drive letter to mount the share to. This would be the same drive letter you would use for mapping a drive in above steps.
Copy the Password from the provided script under the “/pass” section without quotes.
📝 Note
Domain credentials cannot be used to access Azure File Share. It will be file share name prepended with AZURE\ as the username and a storage account key as the password.
Once confirmed the file share is accessible by UNC path via mapped drive. You can safely disconnect the map drive to avoid any confusion.
On the management console, go to Enterprise Workloads.
Select a specific organization (If you have multiple organizations).
Click Protect and Select NAS.
Click on Add NAS Device.
Enter Storage account FQDN as Device IP/FQDN.
Select/Create credential and use the file share name prepended with AZURE\ as the username and a storage account key as the password.
Discover shares or manually add them.
Create a backup set for the NAS share.
Storage account performance tiers
You can use the Standard and Premium performance tiers. The cost implications vary depending on the tier.
Standard
If your Storage account uses the Standard performance tier, the backup cost is directly influenced by the number of files in your file share. Each file generates I/O operations during backup, so the more files you have, the higher the I/O cost incurred. This is an important factor to consider when managing large-scale or fragmented datasets.
Premium
For Storage accounts using the Premium performance tier, Druva's Advanced Smart Scan technology comes into play. This advanced capability optimizes the backup process by minimizing I/O operations during subsequent incremental backups. By intelligently scanning for changes instead of processing the entire dataset, it significantly reduces the load on your environment, leading to lower I/O costs and improved backup efficiency.
Advanced Smart Scan ensures faster and more efficient backups and helps manage operational costs effectively, making it an ideal solution for environments with frequent incremental backups.
See the detailed blog post for more information on how Advanced Smart Scan works and the value it brings to Azure Files backups.