Storage is one of the key pillars of cloud computing model. Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) manages and operates data storage as a service. It is delivered on demand with just-in-time capacity and costs which eliminates the efforts of buying and managing your own data storage infrastructure. This gives you agility, scalability, and durability with the ability to access data anytime, anywhere. You already know that there are two giant leaders i.e. Amazon Web Services and Azure. But each has something different to offer and the Amazon Web Services vs Microsoft Azure battle seems never-ending.

Hence, let us find out which one is the right one for you.

Amazon Web Services vs Microsoft Azure: How to choose the right cloud storage provider?

No matter AWS or Azure, the storage services should fulfill fundamental requirements to ensure your company’s data is safe, secure and available when needed. So, to select the storage services on the cloud, you need to make sure that selected services provide durability, availability, and security along with the required use case.

In the cloud, you can store from few GBs to several PBs (1 petabyte = 1,024 terabyte = 1,048,576 gigabytes) easily. These are not the trivial services that require only user and password to store files on FTP servers. Instead, you need to interact with APIs and it may take time to entirely operate your storage on the cloud. Once your cloud storage is up and running, it makes your data accessible at any time, anywhere governed with security protocols.

Data is stored differently based on type, use case, and requirements. For example, a viral video, your photos or confidential documents – all have different security and access requirements. Object storage is suitable for large unstructured data whereas block storage is optimized for structured data.

Let’s see what each cloud provider has to offer in different storage categories:

S. No. Storage Types AWS Azure 1 Object Storage Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) Azure Blob Storage 2 Virtual Machine Disk Storage Amazon Elastic Block Storage Azure Page Blobs/ Premium Storage Managed Disks 3 File Storage (SMB Compatible) Amazon Elastic File System Azure File Storage 4 Long Term Cold Storage Amazon Glacier Azure Archive Storage Azure Cool Storage 5 Hybrid Storage/ Storage Gateway AWS Storage Gateway Azure Storsimple

In Conclusion with Amazon Web Services vs Microsoft Azure

The comprehensive comparison of different storage services enables you to understand the alternative of each service offered by a particular cloud provider. But apart from that, you need to understand your storage requirements.

It also depends on which industry does your organization falls under. For example, if you are from finance, you would want to store confidential information for a longer time. Therefore, you need to select a storage service that offers archiving and accessibility at any time, anywhere.

Also, you need to check whether the cloud provider offers compliant storage or not. It will help you expand your business across different global regions where regulatory data needs to be compliant. So, it entirely depends on how deeply you understand your business and technical requirements associated with it. Then only, you can efficiently incorporate storage service in your infrastructure.

To avoid vendor lock-in, it is essential to investigate what services, leading cloud providers have to offer. Download our ultimate cheat sheet on AWS vs Azure comparison.