Tip of the Day: Windows Azure Import/Export Service for Moving Large Amounts of Data to Blob Storage

  • Article

Today’s (Cloud) Tip…Windows Azure Import/Export Service for Moving Large Amounts of Data to Blob Storage

You can use the Windows Azure Import/Export service to transfer large amounts of file data to Windows Azure Blob storage in situations where uploading over the network is prohibitively expensive or not feasible. You can also use the Import/Export service to transfer large quantities of data resident in Blob storage to your on-premises installations in a timely and cost-effective manner.

To transfer a large set of file data into Blob storage, you can send one or more hard drives containing that data to a Windows Azure data center, where your data will be uploaded to your storage account. Similarly, to export data from Blob storage, you can send empty hard drives to a Windows Azure data center, where the Blob data from your storage account will be copied to your hard drives and then returned to you. Before you send in a drive that contains data, you'll encrypt the data on the drive; when the Import/Export service exports your data to send to you, the data will also be encrypted before shipping.

You can create and manage import and export jobs in one of two ways:

  • By using the Windows Azure Management Portal.

  • By using a REST interface to the service.

See https://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/manage/services/storage/import-export-service-for-blob-storage/ for all the details.