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RSS feedMarch 2024
General Availability: Azure Files geo-redundancy for standard large file shares
Target availability: Q1 2024
Azure Files geo-redundancy for 100TiB standard SMB file shares is now generally available.
October 2023
Azure Files has been improved to support all valid Unicode characters
Azure Files now supports an expanded character set enabling file and directory names with all valid Unicode characters.
June 2023
Public Preview: Azure AD Support for Azure Files SMB shares REST API
With this announcement, cloud native and modern applications that use REST APIs to access Azure SMB shares can utilize identity-based authentication and authorization to access file shares.
May 2023
Generally available: Azure Files scalability improvement for Azure Virtual Desktop and other workloads that open root directory handles
Target availability: Q2 2023
Azure Files has increased the root directory handle limit per share from 2,000 to 10,000 for standard and premium file shares.
Public Preview: Azure Files geo-redundancy for standard large file shares
Target availability: Q2 2023
Azure Files geo-redundancy for large file shares is now in public preview for standard SMB file shares.
April 2023
General Availability: Support for Linux clients to use identity-based access to Azure file shares over SMB
Target availability: Q2 2023
Linux SMB clients can now use Azure Files identity based authentication and authorization. This capability is available to devices that are domain joined to either customer-managed Microsoft AD DS or Azure AD DS.
March 2023
Generally available: nconnect support for Azure Files NFS v4.1 shares
Target availability: Q1 2023
Azure Files NFS v4.1 share now support nconnect option.
Private Preview: Azure Backup enables vaulted backups for Azure Files for comprehensive data protection.
Target availability: Q1 2023
You can now transfer the backups of Azure Files to the vault to get complete protection against various data loss scenarios.
November 2022
General availability: 12 months free services for new Azure PAYG customers
With an Azure free account, you can explore with free amounts of 55+ always free services.
February 2022
Generally available: Utilize multiple backups per day for Azure Files in Azure Backup
Target availability: Q1 2022
The feature that allows you to configure multiple backups per day for Azure Files via backup policy is now generally available.
October 2021
Public preview: Multiple backups per day for Azure Files
Azure Backup now supports configuring multiple backups per day for Azure Files via backup policy. You can achieve RPO (Recovery Point Objective) up to 4 hours using Azure Files snapshot-based backup solution.
September 2021
General availability: Azure Files now supports SMB 3.1.1
Server Message Block (SMB) 3.1.1 is the most secure and highly performant version of SMB. With SMB 3.1.1 support for Azure Files, you now can require AES-256-GCM for Windows 10, version 21H1 and newer clients.
SMB Multichannel for Azure Files is generally available
Server Message Block (SMB) Multichannel enables you to improve the IO performance of your SMB client 2-4x, increasing performance and decreasing total cost of ownership.
General availability: Azure Files supports storage capacity reservations for premium, hot, and cool tiers
Storage capacity reservations for Azure Files enable you to significantly reduce the total cost of ownership of storage by pre-committing to storage utilization. To achieve the lowest costs in Azure, you should consider reserving capacity for all production workloads.
March 2021
Azure Storage Explorer v1.18.0 is now generally available
New release of Azure Storage Explorer (v1.18.0) will decrease time to load, connect, and transfer data to Azure Storage.
February 2021
General availability: Soft delete for Azure file shares is now on by default for new storage accounts
Soft delete, which protects Azure file shares from accidental deletion, is now on by default for new storage accounts created after January 31st.
November 2020
More IOPS at no additional cost for Azure Files premium tier
All premium shares get additional baseline and burst input/output per second (IOPS) at zero cost, providing better performance and lower cost of deployment.
SMB Multichannel preview is now available on Azure Files premium tier
Lower your deployment cost and increase you Server Message Block (SMB) 3.x client’s performance with Azure Files SMB Multichannel.
October 2020
Soft delete for Azure file shares is now generally available in all regions
Soft delete protects Azure file shares from accidental deletion. In January 2021, it will be enabled by default for all new storage accounts.
September 2020
Azure Files support for NFS v4.1 is now in preview
Azure Files now adds support for NFS v4.1 file system protocol for an easy migration of your Linux-centric workloads.
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