The Azure Data Box offline data transfer solution enables you to transfer petabytes of data to Azure Storage in a fast, affordable, and reliable manner.
The Azure Data Box offline data transfer solution enables you to transfer petabytes of data to Azure Storage in a fast, cost-effective, and reliable manner. Secure data transfer is accelerated by a hardware transfer device that enables offline data ingestion into Azure.
We are excited to announce several new service features, including:
- General availability of self-encrypting drives, Azure Data Box Disk SKUs that enable fast transfers on Linux systems.
- Supports data ingestion to multiple Blob access tiers in a single order.
- Preview cross-region data transfers to seamlessly ingest data from a source country or region to a selected Azure destination in another country or region.
- Support for Azure Storage Mover to copy catch-up data online for all changes made in active workloads after offline migration using Azure Data Box
Additionally, we are pleased to announce that Azure Data Box cloud service is HIPAA/BAA, PCI 3DS, and PCI DSS certified. You can read more about these new features below.
Azure Data Box Disk: Self-encrypting drives
Azure Data Box Disk is now generally available in the EU, US, and Japan with hardware encryption options. These Self-Encrypting Drives (SEDs) use dedicated/native/specialized hardware for data encryption without any software dependency on the host machine. These SEDs use special native hardware on the disk for data encryption without any software dependency on the host machine. This offering now supports Linux data transfer rates similar to BitLocker encrypted Data Box Disk drives on Windows.
Azure Data Box Disk SEDs are popular with some automotive customers because they connect directly to in-vehicle Linux-based data loggers via a SATA interface, eliminating the need to copy secondary data copies from other in-vehicle storage and saving time. Here’s how automotive data logger manufacturer Xylon uses Azure Data Box Disks: It uses self-encrypted drives to migrate advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) sensor data to Azure.
Working with the Microsoft Azure team, we have enabled data logging directly to hardware encrypted Data Box Disks connected to the logiRECORDER Automotive HIL Video Logger. This enables our customers to transfer valuable data from their test vehicles to the cloud in the simplest and fastest way possible, without wasting time on unnecessary data copying and reformatting.”
—Jura Ivanovic, Product Director, Automotive HIL Video Logger, Xylon
Data Box Disk: Learn more about self-encrypting drives and start migrating your on-premises data to Azure.
Support for collecting multiple access layers
You can now transfer data to different Blob access tiers, including Cold Tier, from a single Azure Data Box order. Previously, Azure Data Box supported transferring data only to the default access tier of an Azure Storage account. For example, to move data to the Cool tier of an Azure Storage account, which defaults to hot, you had to first move the data to the hot tier via Azure Data Box, then leverage lifecycle management to upload the data to Azure, and then move the data to the Cool tier.
We are now introducing a new “Access Tier” folder in the folder hierarchy on your device. Any data copied to the “Cool” folder will have its access tier set to cool, regardless of the default access tier of the target storage account, as will data copied to other folders representing different access tiers. Learn more about multi-access tier ingest support.
Cross-region data transfer to selected Azure regions
We are excited to announce that the Azure Data Box cross-region data transfer feature is now available in preview, allowing you to seamlessly ingest your on-premises data from a source country or region to an Azure destination region in another country or region. For example, you can use this feature to copy your on-premises data from Singapore or India to an Azure destination region in US West. The Azure Data Box device is not shipped across a commerce boundary. Instead, it is transferred from an Azure data center within the original country or region where your on-premises data resides. Data transfer to the destination Azure region is done over the Azure network at no additional charge.
Learn more about the supported country or region combinations and features for Azure Data Box, Azure Data Box Disk, and Azure Data Box Heavy.
Support for online catch-up copies through Azure Storage Mover integration
If your data source has active workloads, there is a high chance that changes will occur while the Azure Data Box is being transferred to Azure. Hence, you need to import those changes to cloud storage before migrating your workloads to cloud storage. We are excited to announce that you can now combine Azure Storage Mover with Data Box service to form an effective file and folder migration solution that minimizes downtime for your workloads. The Storage Mover job detects the differences between onsite and cloud storage and efficiently transfers all the updates and new files that were not previously captured in the Data Box transfer. For example, if only the metadata (e.g. permissions) of a file has changed, Azure Storage Mover will upload only the new metadata instead of the entire file content.
Learn more about how catch-up copy using Azure Storage Mover’s Merge and Mirror copy modes helps you transfer only delta data to Azure.
certification
Azure Data Box cloud service has achieved HIPAA/BAA, PCI 3DS, and PCI DSS certifications. These certifications have been a major request from many of our customers in the healthcare and financial sectors respectively, and we are pleased to have achieved a state of compliance that can meet their data transfer needs.
Additional product updates
- Supports Azure files up to 4TB across the entire product family.
- Support for data transfer to Azure regions “Central Poland” and “Northern Italy”.
- Transfers from Data Box Disk to premium Azure Files and Blob Archive tiers are now supported.
- A data copy service that significantly improves the collection and upload times of small files is now generally available.
Our goal is to continuously improve the simplicity of offline data transfer, and your feedback is invaluable. If you have any suggestions or feedback about Azure Data Box, please email us at DataBox@microsoft.com. We look forward to reviewing your feedback and comments.
