Amazon EBS vs Azure Storage

Overview

Amazon EBS

Stacks650

Followers542

Votes82

Azure Storage

Stacks1.3K

Followers787

Votes52

Amazon EBS vs Azure Storage: What are the differences?

Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) and Azure Storage are two popular cloud storage services offered by Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure, respectively. Let's explore the key differences between them.

Storage Types: Amazon EBS primarily provides block-level storage for EC2 instances, allowing users to create and attach persistent block storage volumes to their instances. On the other hand, Azure Storage supports various storage options such as Blob storage (for unstructured data), File storage (for fully managed file shares), Queue storage (for messaging between application components), and Table storage (for NoSQL key-value store).
Performance Levels: Amazon EBS allows users to choose from different volume types, each offering different performance characteristics, including General Purpose SSD (gp2/gp3), Provisioned IOPS SSD (io1/io2), Throughput Optimized HDD (st1), and Cold HDD (sc1). Azure Storage offers performance tiers such as Standard (for general-purpose workloads), Premium (for high-performance databases and I/O-intensive workloads), and Archive (for long-term retention and backup).
Snapshots and Backups: Both Amazon EBS and Azure Storage allow users to take snapshots or backups of their data for data protection and disaster recovery purposes. However, there are differences in the pricing models and features offered. Amazon EBS charges separately for storing snapshots, while Azure Storage includes the cost of snapshots in the overall storage pricing. Additionally, Azure Storage provides Soft Delete functionality, which allows accidental deletions to be undone within a defined retention period.
Integration and Compatibility: Amazon EBS seamlessly integrates with other AWS services such as Amazon EC2, Amazon RDS, and Amazon Redshift. It offers features like Amazon CloudWatch for monitoring and Elastic Volumes for dynamically adjusting volume capacity. Azure Storage, on the other hand, integrates well with the entire Microsoft Azure ecosystem, providing integration options with Azure VMs, Azure Functions, Azure Logic Apps, and Azure SQL Database.
Global Availability: AWS has a broader global presence, with a larger number of region availability zones compared to Azure. This provides users of Amazon EBS with more options for choosing the desired region for storing their data and launching instances. Azure Storage also has a widespread global reach, but may have slight differences in availability zones and regions in certain areas.
Pricing Models: Both Amazon EBS and Azure Storage have their pricing models based on factors such as storage capacity, data transfer rates, snapshots, and additional features. It's crucial to carefully analyze the pricing details and compare them based on your specific requirements to determine which service offers the most cost-effective solution for your organization.

In summary, Amazon EBS provides block-level storage volumes for use with Amazon EC2 instances, offering high-performance storage for applications running in the AWS cloud. Azure Storage, on the other hand, is a scalable object storage service that provides durable and highly available storage for various types of data, including blobs, files, tables, and queues, suitable for a wide range of storage needs in Azure-based applications.

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Detailed Comparison

Amazon EBS	Azure Storage
Amazon EBS volumes are network-attached, and persist independently from the life of an instance. Amazon EBS provides highly available, highly reliable, predictable storage volumes that can be attached to a running Amazon EC2 instance and exposed as a device within the instance. Amazon EBS is particularly suited for applications that require a database, file system, or access to raw block level storage.	Azure Storage provides the flexibility to store and retrieve large amounts of unstructured data, such as documents and media files with Azure Blobs; structured nosql based data with Azure Tables; reliable messages with Azure Queues, and use SMB based Azure Files for migrating on-premises applications to the cloud.
Amazon EBS allows you to create storage volumes from 1 GB to 1 TB that can be mounted as devices by Amazon EC2 instances. Multiple volumes can be mounted to the same instance.;Amazon EBS enables you to provision a specific level of I/O performance if desired, by choosing a Provisioned IOPS volume. This allows you to predictably scale to thousands of IOPS per Amazon EC2 instance.;Storage volumes behave like raw, unformatted block devices, with user supplied device names and a block device interface. You can create a file system on top of Amazon EBS volumes, or use them in any other way you would use a block device (like a hard drive).;Amazon EBS volumes are placed in a specific Availability Zone, and can then be attached to instances also in that same Availability Zone.;Each storage volume is automatically replicated within the same Availability Zone. This prevents data loss due to failure of any single hardware component.;Amazon EBS also provides the ability to create point-in-time snapshots of volumes, which are persisted to Amazon S3. These snapshots can be used as the starting point for new Amazon EBS volumes, and protect data for long-term durability. The same snapshot can be used to instantiate as many volumes as you wish. These snapshots can be copied across AWS regions, making it easier to leverage multiple AWS regions for geographical expansion, data center migration and disaster recovery.;AWS also enables you to create new volumes from AWS hosted public data sets.;Amazon CloudWatch exposes performance metrics for EBS volumes, giving you insight into bandwidth, throughput, latency, and queue depth. The metrics are accessible via the AWS CloudWatch API or the AWS Management Console. For more details, see Amazon CloudWatch.	Blobs, Tables, Queues, and Files;Highly scalable;Durable & highly available;Premium Storage;Designed for developers
Statistics
Stacks 650	Stacks 1.3K
Followers 542	Followers 787
Votes 82	Votes 52
Pros & Cons
Pros 36 Point-in-time snapshots 27 Data reliability 19 Configurable i/o performance	Pros 24 All-in-one storage solution 15 Pay only for data used regardless of disk size 9 Shared drive mapping 2 Cost-effective 2 Cheapest hot and cloud storage Cons 2 Direct support is not provided by Azure storage
Integrations
No integrations available	Microsoft Azure

What are some alternatives to Amazon EBS, Azure Storage?

Amazon S3

Amazon Simple Storage Service provides a fully redundant data storage infrastructure for storing and retrieving any amount of data, at any time, from anywhere on the web

Google Cloud Storage

Google Cloud Storage allows world-wide storing and retrieval of any amount of data and at any time. It provides a simple programming interface which enables developers to take advantage of Google's own reliable and fast networking infrastructure to perform data operations in a secure and cost effective manner. If expansion needs arise, developers can benefit from the scalability provided by Google's infrastructure.

Minio

Minio is an object storage server compatible with Amazon S3 and licensed under Apache 2.0 License

OpenEBS

OpenEBS allows you to treat your persistent workload containers, such as DBs on containers, just like other containers. OpenEBS itself is deployed as just another container on your host.

Rackspace Cloud Files

Cloud Files, powered by OpenStack®, provides an easy to use online storage for files and media which can be delivered globally at blazing speeds over Akamai's content delivery network (CDN).

Storj

It is an open source, decentralized file storage solution. It uses encryption, file sharing, and a blockchain-based hash table to store files on a peer-to-peer network. The goal is to make cloud file storage faster, cheaper, and private.

RunAbove

We give you full access to the OpenStack API, which our compute (Nova) and storage (Swift) solutions are based on. This means no provider lock-in and easy automation of all your deployments. You can also manage your account and billing details via our RESTful API. You can choose between Horizon or OVH's easy-to-use web panel.

DigitalOcean Spaces

DigitalOcean Spaces are designed to make it easy and cost effective to store and serve massive amounts of data. Spaces are ideal for storing static, unstructured data like audio, video, and images as well as large amounts of text.

Rook

It is an open source cloud-native storage orchestrator for Kubernetes, providing the platform, framework, and support for a diverse set of storage solutions to natively integrate with cloud-native environments.

DigitalOcean Block Storage

Add more storage space, mix and match compute and storage to suit your database, file storage, application, service, mobile, and backup needs.

Related Comparisons

Amazon EBS vs Azure Storage: What are the differences?

Storage Types: Amazon EBS primarily provides block-level storage for EC2 instances, allowing users to create and attach persistent block storage volumes to their instances. On the other hand, Azure Storage supports various storage options such as Blob storage (for unstructured data), File storage (for fully managed file shares), Queue storage (for messaging between application components), and Table storage (for NoSQL key-value store).
Performance Levels: Amazon EBS allows users to choose from different volume types, each offering different performance characteristics, including General Purpose SSD (gp2/gp3), Provisioned IOPS SSD (io1/io2), Throughput Optimized HDD (st1), and Cold HDD (sc1). Azure Storage offers performance tiers such as Standard (for general-purpose workloads), Premium (for high-performance databases and I/O-intensive workloads), and Archive (for long-term retention and backup).
Snapshots and Backups: Both Amazon EBS and Azure Storage allow users to take snapshots or backups of their data for data protection and disaster recovery purposes. However, there are differences in the pricing models and features offered. Amazon EBS charges separately for storing snapshots, while Azure Storage includes the cost of snapshots in the overall storage pricing. Additionally, Azure Storage provides Soft Delete functionality, which allows accidental deletions to be undone within a defined retention period.
Integration and Compatibility: Amazon EBS seamlessly integrates with other AWS services such as Amazon EC2, Amazon RDS, and Amazon Redshift. It offers features like Amazon CloudWatch for monitoring and Elastic Volumes for dynamically adjusting volume capacity. Azure Storage, on the other hand, integrates well with the entire Microsoft Azure ecosystem, providing integration options with Azure VMs, Azure Functions, Azure Logic Apps, and Azure SQL Database.
Global Availability: AWS has a broader global presence, with a larger number of region availability zones compared to Azure. This provides users of Amazon EBS with more options for choosing the desired region for storing their data and launching instances. Azure Storage also has a widespread global reach, but may have slight differences in availability zones and regions in certain areas.
Pricing Models: Both Amazon EBS and Azure Storage have their pricing models based on factors such as storage capacity, data transfer rates, snapshots, and additional features. It's crucial to carefully analyze the pricing details and compare them based on your specific requirements to determine which service offers the most cost-effective solution for your organization.

Amazon EBS vs Azure Storage

Overview