Azure Files (SMB and NFS Shares)

Azure Files provides fully managed file shares in the cloud that are accessible via the industry-standard Server Message Block (SMB) and Network File System (NFS) protocols. This lesson covers how Azure Files works, when to use it, performance tiers, authentication, and how to mount file shares on different operating systems.

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What Is Azure Files?

Azure Files is a managed file share service that allows you to create file shares in the cloud and mount them from Windows, Linux, and macOS — just like mounting a network drive on premises. It eliminates the need to manage file server infrastructure.

Key Benefits

• Fully managed — no file server VMs to maintain, patch, or scale
• Shared access — multiple clients can mount the same share concurrently
• Cross-platform — supports SMB (Windows, Linux, macOS) and NFS (Linux)
• Familiar protocols — use existing tools and applications without modification
• Cloud integration — accessible via Azure Portal, CLI, REST API, and SDKs
• Snapshots — point-in-time read-only copies of the entire share

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SMB vs NFS

Azure Files supports two protocols for mounting file shares:

Feature	SMB	NFS
Protocol versions	SMB 2.1, 3.0, 3.1.1	NFS 4.1
Platform support	Windows, Linux, macOS	Linux only
Authentication	Entra ID, AD DS, storage key	Network-based only
Encryption in transit	SMB 3.0+ encryption	Not supported (use private endpoints)
Storage account type	Standard or Premium	Premium only
Use case	General file shares, Windows workloads	Linux workloads, POSIX permissions

When to Use SMB

• Windows-based applications and workloads
• Shared configuration files across multiple VMs
• Lift-and-shift of on-premises file shares
• Developer tools and build outputs

When to Use NFS

• Linux workloads requiring POSIX-compliant file access
• Applications that need file locking semantics
• HPC (high-performance computing) workloads
• Media processing pipelines

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Performance Tiers

Tier	Backed By	Latency	IOPS	Throughput	Use Case
Premium	SSD	Single-digit ms	Up to 100,000	Up to 10 GiB/s	IO-intensive workloads, databases, analytics
Transaction optimised	HDD	Standard	Standard	Standard	Transaction-heavy workloads (messaging, collaboration)
Hot	HDD	Standard	Standard	Standard	General-purpose file shares, team shares
Cool	HDD	Standard	Standard	Standard	Cost-optimised for infrequently accessed data

Premium file shares are provisioned — you pay for the capacity you allocate, and IOPS/throughput scales with the share size. Standard file shares are pay-as-you-go based on actual usage.

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Creating a File Share

Azure CLI

# Create an SMB file share (Standard)
az storage share-rm create \
  --storage-account mystorageaccount \
  --resource-group rg-storage-demo \
  --name team-share \
  --quota 100 \
  --access-tier Hot

# Create an NFS file share (requires Premium storage account)
az storage share-rm create \
  --storage-account mypremiumaccount \
  --resource-group rg-storage-demo \
  --name nfs-share \
  --quota 1024 \
  --enabled-protocols NFS

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Mounting File Shares

Windows (SMB)