1 00:00:00,840 --> 00:00:04,000 This is a discussion of AFS, or Azure File Sync, 2 00:00:04,000 --> 00:00:07,760 which is an Azure service that you can use to do many things. 3 00:00:07,760 --> 00:00:11,630 You can centralize your local file shares into a hybrid 4 00:00:11,630 --> 00:00:13,900 storage solution using Azure Files. 5 00:00:13,900 --> 00:00:18,110 Azure Files is one of the four services in Azure Storage, 6 00:00:18,110 --> 00:00:20,340 a general purpose storage account. 7 00:00:20,340 --> 00:00:24,180 We could summarize Azure Files in a very succinct way by 8 00:00:24,180 --> 00:00:28,330 saying cloud hosted SMB and NFS file shares. 9 00:00:28,330 --> 00:00:30,070 AFS, or Azure File Sync, 10 00:00:30,070 --> 00:00:33,710 gives us multi‑site access and synchronization and that 11 00:00:33,710 --> 00:00:37,020 multi‑site access and sync happens, this is really important, 12 00:00:37,020 --> 00:00:41,080 note this well, with no changes required to your client application, 13 00:00:41,080 --> 00:00:44,450 so your drive mappings, your work folders, 14 00:00:44,450 --> 00:00:46,930 your Windows 10, Windows 11 work folders, 15 00:00:46,930 --> 00:00:49,920 all of that local access, even your DFS, 16 00:00:49,920 --> 00:00:53,080 your distributed file system topology on‑premises, 17 00:00:53,080 --> 00:00:55,280 you don't have to change anything. 18 00:00:55,280 --> 00:01:00,410 Azure File Sync just overlays your existing file share architecture. 19 00:01:00,410 --> 00:01:02,040 It's really cool. 20 00:01:02,040 --> 00:01:04,510 And you'll see also, we've got cloud backup, 21 00:01:04,510 --> 00:01:09,340 so therefore, we have business continuity/disaster recovery features. 22 00:01:09,340 --> 00:01:10,710 You can save space, 23 00:01:10,710 --> 00:01:14,840 disk space on your local file servers by turning on cloud tiering 24 00:01:14,840 --> 00:01:18,360 where your less frequently accessed files will go up to the cloud and 25 00:01:18,360 --> 00:01:20,580 be removed from your local file servers, 26 00:01:20,580 --> 00:01:25,230 although those file names, of course, will appear in directory listings, 27 00:01:25,230 --> 00:01:28,520 and then you've got a convenient mechanism for cloud backup. 28 00:01:28,520 --> 00:01:33,530 So I like to describe the Azure File Service and Azure Storage as a 29 00:01:33,530 --> 00:01:36,840 Swiss Army knife because it's so multi‑functional, 30 00:01:36,840 --> 00:01:40,230 and I've always been a fan of Azure File Sync as some really 31 00:01:40,230 --> 00:01:45,200 clever engineering that carries on that tradition of Swiss Army 32 00:01:45,200 --> 00:01:48,340 knife metaphor or multi‑function. 33 00:01:48,340 --> 00:01:52,170 Here is a diagram I created and lucid chart to help you 34 00:01:52,170 --> 00:01:55,800 understand the use case and the high‑level Azure File Sync 35 00:01:55,800 --> 00:02:00,520 architecture a little bit better, also to get you on board with vocabulary. 36 00:02:00,520 --> 00:02:04,340 So step one is creating an instance in your Azure subscription 37 00:02:04,340 --> 00:02:06,420 of what's called a Storage Sync Service. 38 00:02:06,420 --> 00:02:09,540 Now your business may need only one of these because 39 00:02:09,540 --> 00:02:16,540 you can have multiple sync groups, and a sync group consists of two components. 40 00:02:16,540 --> 00:02:18,220 You've got a cloud endpoint, 41 00:02:18,220 --> 00:02:22,450 which is going to be a single file share in a storage account, 42 00:02:22,450 --> 00:02:24,240 and then on‑prem, 43 00:02:24,240 --> 00:02:28,450 you have your server endpoints and the way you register your 44 00:02:28,450 --> 00:02:32,340 on‑premises file servers is simply installing a small agent. 45 00:02:32,340 --> 00:02:34,800 Now the agent is Windows only, unfortunately, 46 00:02:34,800 --> 00:02:39,490 but it does communicate network wide only on TCP for principally, 47 00:02:39,490 --> 00:02:41,580 I should say TCP 443. 48 00:02:41,580 --> 00:02:42,350 In the real world, 49 00:02:42,350 --> 00:02:45,200 you always want to double check the docs to see if 50 00:02:45,200 --> 00:02:49,400 there is any port requirements, but the main one is TCP 443. 51 00:02:49,400 --> 00:02:54,000 Note that we're not having to expose TCP 445, 52 00:02:54,000 --> 00:02:57,170 the server message block port, to the world. 53 00:02:57,170 --> 00:02:59,020 No, no, no, you don't have to do that. 54 00:02:59,020 --> 00:03:04,170 It's just going to be HTTPS encrypted TLS‑based communications 55 00:03:04,170 --> 00:03:07,540 between the server endpoints and those cloud endpoints. 56 00:03:07,540 --> 00:03:10,980 You can have only one cloud endpoint per sync group, 57 00:03:10,980 --> 00:03:14,880 but you can have as many server endpoints as you want and that gives you, 58 00:03:14,880 --> 00:03:20,720 again, some of that redundancy and possibly the ability to move away from DFS. 59 00:03:20,720 --> 00:03:27,000 You know, DFS and DFS replication carry with them their own history and baggage. 60 00:03:27,000 --> 00:03:32,140 You might find that a migration to Azure File Sync makes a lot more sense, 61 00:03:32,140 --> 00:03:34,750 and you know, something else that's so cool about AFS, 62 00:03:34,750 --> 00:03:38,240 let's say that in our London office there on the right side of the slide, 63 00:03:38,240 --> 00:03:40,980 that server‑london file server goes offline, 64 00:03:40,980 --> 00:03:43,450 it has a catastrophic hardware problem. 65 00:03:43,450 --> 00:03:47,360 We can literally just install the Azure File Sync agent 66 00:03:47,360 --> 00:03:52,140 on another member server in London, connect it up into the sync group, 67 00:03:52,140 --> 00:03:54,240 and once the data is synced, 68 00:03:54,240 --> 00:03:58,810 that machine takes over those file shares for the original machine. 69 00:03:58,810 --> 00:04:02,140 You might have to do some DNS updating depending, 70 00:04:02,140 --> 00:04:06,410 but it's literally that easy and the cloud backup and the cloud tiering, 71 00:04:06,410 --> 00:04:11,000 all of that is transparent. Let's get into the demo, and we've got a lot to do.