Microsoft's Blob Storage system on Azure is designed to make unstructured data available to customers anywhere through REST-based object storage.
$0.01
per GB/per month
Qumulo Core
Score 7.0 out of 10
N/A
Qumulo Core Hybrid Cloud File Storage delivers real-time visibility, scale and control of data across on-prem and cloud. Qumulo customers can manage storage at a granular level, programmatically configuring and managing usage, capacity and performance.
In Azure, it is the storage to use, and in my view, the Blob Storage offers more, or finer-grained configuration options, than S3. So my recommendation would be to check in detail what is offered. As the Blob Storage is more or less a Microsoft exclusive product, the "interoperability" is more limited than, for example, with S3. The S3 is more widely adopted, and if you cannot exclude a migration scenario from one cloud provider to another, additional effort is needed.
Qumulo is great for media and entertainment companies, that need simple and easy management of a NAS. The product can also scale and be sized to larger shops too. The support that comes with it also can act as an extension of internal IT. Their support is always watching the box when it phones home with hardware errors or if it would go offline. Qumulo is not initially set up well-running virtual workloads, while Vmware supports NFS, some settings need to be adjusted on Qumulo to allow for upgrades to happen while virtual machines are running
Blob storage is fairly simple, with several different options/settings that can be configured. The file explorer has enhanced its usability. Some areas could be improved, such as providing more details or stats on how many times a file has been accessed. It is an obvious choice if you're already using Azure/Entra.
Microsoft has improved its customer service standpoint over the years. The ability to chat with an issue, get a callback, schedule a call or work with an architecture team(for free) is a huge plus. I can get mentorship and guidance on where to go with my environment without pushy sales tactics. This is very refreshing. Typically support can get me to where I need to be on the first contact, which is also nice.
Their Slack-based support is like nothing I have experienced. They are fast, helpful, and willing to go the extra mile, even when an issue is not clearly their's to solve. They are committed to your success. The engineers on the Slack channel are oftentimes the engineers that programmed the very same feature you are asking questions about or having issues with.
Azure Premium Blob offers better latency than competitors. It works best with the Azure ecosystem, and competitors lack it. Azure Blob even stands out in storage durability, providing up to 16 nines. It can have various use cases that can suit all the organisation's needs. The Azure Blob solution can also be deployed on-premises.
Qumulo was not the least expensive but we were blown away by support offered and pre-sales support to ensure questions were answered. Our main challenges were mixed end-user platforms and a diverse set of use cases on those end-user computers. Having the dual access to volumes, over NFS and SMB, helps us greatly in this area.
