Question

What are some ways to ingest data from on-premise storage to Azure?

Answer 1

While choosing a data transfer solution, the main factors to consider are:

• Data Size
• Data Transfer Frequency (One-time or Periodic)
• Network Bandwidth
  
  Based on the above factors, data movement solutions can be:

1. Offline transfer: It is used for one-time bulk data transfer. Thus, Microsoft can provide customers with disks or secure storage devices, or even customers can also ship their disks to Microsoft. The offline options for transfer are named data box, data box disk, data box heavy and import/export (customer’s own disks).
2. Network transfer: Over a network connection, data transfer can be performed in the following ways:
3. Graphical Interface: This is ideal while transferring a few files and when there is no need to automate the data transfer. Graphical interface options include Azure Storage Explorer and Azure Portal.
4. Programmatic Transfer: Some available scriptable data transfer tools are AzCopy, Azure PowerShell, Azure CLI. Various programming language SDKs are also available.
5. On-premises devices: A physical device called Data Box Edge and a virtual Data Box Gateway are installed at the customer’s premises, optimising the data transfer to Azure.
6. Managed Data Factory pipeline: Azure Data Factory pipelines can move, transform and automate regular data transfers from on-prem data stores to Azure.