Nowadays, we are facing many storage challenges. One of them is rapid data growth that exceeds 40%, which leads to more expense for storage, its protection, and its recovery. StorSimple would be a good fit in these scenarios, especially since it spans across on-premises and Azure Cloud, which means you do not have to worry about a storage shortage anymore.

Azure StorSimple is an integrated storage solution. This solution is one of the greatest solutions for managing storage across on-premises devices/hypervisors and Azure Storage. It can manage your primary storage, archival storage, tape backup, and so on. Whatever the type of disk (HDD or SSD), it can manage it. Then, you can assign each part of the storage to the solution that would need it.

There are many reasons for using Azure StorSimple, as stated in the following points:

• Cost reduction: According to the current needs, storage will be provided whether from local storage or cloud storage. Moreover, it eliminates redundant data and compresses it.
• Seamless integration: StorSimple supports iSCSI and SMB to connect to your data stored on StorSimple, and when connecting, it appears in one location whether it's stored locally or in the cloud.
• Data mobility: The existence of the data on Azure supports its accessibility from anywhere. Also, should a disaster occur locally, you can recover your data via another site, or by building a StorSimple cloud appliance on an Azure VM.
• Easier storage management: You can manage your storage whether it exists locally or on the cloud, using a single interface that is easy and seamless to use.
• Simplify data protection and disaster recovery: Data restoration occurs as needed, which means you do not have to wait too long to get your data recovered. That leads to less downtime, and minimal operational disruption.
• Higher performance: As mentioned in previous chapters, there is a premium storage option supported by Microsoft Azure. Using this solution will provide a higher performance and reduced latency.

StorSimple is available in two flavors:

• StorSimple Virtual Array
• StorSimple 8000 series

So, let's bring them to the table and get our hands dirty.