AZ-305 Designing Microsoft Azure Infrastructure Solutions Exam
Venture into the world of Azure Infrastructure, where design meets functionality. Harness your skills and gain mastery over complex cloud structures to ace the AZ-305 Designing Microsoft Azure Infrastructure Solutions exam!
Practice Test
Expert
Practice Test
Expert
Recommend a solution for migrating unstructured data
Compare Azure Unstructured Data Migration Tools
Migrating unstructured data to Azure requires choosing the right combination of offline seeding and online transfer tools. You must evaluate each tool's throughput capacity, protocol support, encryption schema, offline options, and pricing model. This comparison covers four primary options: Azure Data Box, Azure Data Box Gateway, AzCopy, and Azure Data Factory. Understanding their strengths and constraints helps you design an optimal, large-scale migration pipeline.
Azure Data Box
Azure Data Box is a physical device that you ship to an Azure datacenter for bulk data onboarding.
- Supports only SMB for copying files with AES 256-bit encryption at rest and in transit.
- Offers usable capacity from 80 TiB up to 525 TiB (and Data Box Heavy up to 1 PiB).
- Provides an offline seed option, making it ideal when network bandwidth is limited or costly.
- Pricing includes a one-time device fee plus shipping and data import charges.
Azure Data Box Gateway
Azure Data Box Gateway is a virtual appliance you deploy on-premises to transfer data continuously.
- Acts like an SMB or NFS file server on your network, syncing data to Azure Storage over HTTPS.
- Supports ongoing incremental uploads with encryption in transit and encryption at rest in Azure.
- Scales out to multiple gateways for higher throughput, limited by your uplink speed and VM size.
- Billed on a monthly capacity-based fee, with no separate device shipping costs.
AzCopy
AzCopy is a command-line utility for high-performance online transfers to Azure Storage.
- Uses REST APIs over HTTPS to copy blobs, files, and ADLS Gen2 data at network-limited speeds.
- Leverages parallel threads and concurrency settings (
AZCOPY_CONCURRENCY_VALUE
) for maximum throughput. - Provides built-in encryption in transit via HTTPS but requires no offline seeding.
- Free to use, with only standard data egress and storage charges applying.
Azure Data Factory
Azure Data Factory (ADF) is a cloud-based orchestration service that moves and transforms data at scale.
- Supports SMB, NFS, REST (Amazon S3, HTTP, OData), and many other connectors.
- Achieves sustained throughput up to 2 GBps using up to 256 DIUs per copy activity and multiple parallel pipelines.
- Encrypts data in transit with HTTPS and can integrate with Key Vault–backed managed identities.
- Pricing is pay-as-you-go: you pay for pipeline runs, DIUs, and data movement volume, with no upfront device costs.
Conclusion
When recommending a solution for migrating unstructured data to Azure, it's crucial to understand the different tools available and their unique features. Azure Data Box offers a physical device solution ideal for limited bandwidth scenarios. Azure Data Box Gateway provides continuous data transfer through a virtual appliance. AzCopy ensures high-performance online transfers with REST APIs, while Azure Data Factory excels in moving and transforming data at scale with multiple protocol supports and integration options. Evaluating factors like throughput capacities, encryption schemas, offline seeding options, and pricing models will help effectively design the migration pipeline suited to your business needs.