
The storage account is managed by the storage resource provider, which has the namespace Microsoft.Storage. The top-level unit of management, or tracked resource in Azure Files, and other storage services such as Blob storage, is the storage account.

In Azure, the control plane is provided through the Azure Resource Manager, sometimes abbreviated as ARM, which provides a common way of exposing Azure resources to be managed by the customer. To learn more about Azure Files, including deployment, networking, and identity configuration, see: If you have an existing application that was written native file system APIs, you absolutely do not need to rewrite it to take advantage of Azure Files the key value proposition of Azure Files is exposing native file system APIs through use of SMB or NFS. If you are constructing a line-of-business application, particularly one that end users will use against a mounted Azure file share, you can use either SMB/NFS or FileREST, however, you may find that using SMB/NFS provide an easier path since they enable you to use native file system APIs. As an example, Azure File Sync and Azure Backup are notable first party value-added services that extensively use the FileREST API to add value on-top of a customer-owned Azure file share.Īs a general rule, you should consider using the FileREST API if you are building value-added services or applications, especially if you are providing such value-added services to your customers. These might include antivirus, backup, data management, or replication products. The stateless nature of HTTPS makes the FileREST API is useful for use in cloud services or applications that need to access many Azure file shares, such as value-added services or applications that can be attached to the Azure file share to add some capability.
Rest client download file code#
You could write code to create HTTPS requests yourself, but the expected way that you consume the FileREST API is via the Azure SDKs, which provide idiomatic language APIs for popular languages such as C#, Java, Python, JavaScript, Go, and others.īecause the FileREST API was designed specifically for Azure Files, it enables you to access features of Azure Files that are not accessible over SMB or NFS, and perform certain operations, such as copy, more efficiently than via SMB/NFS. To use the FileREST API, you create HTTPS requests against the FileREST HTTPS endpoints.

Unlike SMB and NFS, which enable transparent access to remote file shares using native file system APIs, the FileREST protocol provides a different method of accessing file share data.

This means that applications, and importantly users of these applications, don't need to do anything special (or even know) their data is on a remote file share instead of local storage.Īzure Files also provides a REST API, often called the FileREST API, which provides another method of accessing data stored in Azure file shares. NET's System.IO interfaces or Python's open/read/write methods. When you mount a file share on your computer using SMB or NFS, your operating system redirects local file system API requests, such as those that you might make using.

Azure Files provides hosted cloud file shares that you can access ("mount") using industry standard file system protocols such as SMB and NFS.
