{"id":7359,"date":"2021-12-08T08:00:42","date_gmt":"2021-12-08T08:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.insentragroup.com\/nz\/?p=7359"},"modified":"2022-03-30T08:26:21","modified_gmt":"2022-03-30T08:26:21","slug":"azure-files-smb-multichannel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.insentragroup.com\/nz\/insights\/geek-speak\/cloud-and-modern-data-center\/azure-files-smb-multichannel\/","title":{"rendered":"Azure Files SMB Multichannel"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>There is a&nbsp;very exciting&nbsp;feature coming (which is&nbsp;already in public preview at the time of writing),&nbsp;to Azure Files.&nbsp;Azure Files Premium File Shares can now support&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/docs.microsoft.com\/en-us\/azure\/storage\/files\/storage-files-enable-smb-multichannel\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">SMB Multichannel<\/a>.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This will allow organizations to dramatically increase\u00a0the\u00a0performance of\u00a0IO-intensive storage workloads. Right off the top of my head,\u00a0I can think of one that will potentially be a great candidate for this- Storage of FSLogix\u00a0profile containers\u00a0for\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.insentragroup.com\/nz\/insights\/geek-speak\/modern-workplace\/what-is-windows-virtual-desktop\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Azure\u00a0Virtual Desktop\u00a0(AVD)<\/a>\u00a0deployments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 style=\"padding-bottom: 15px;margin-bottom: 30px;margin-top: 40px;border-bottom: 1px solid #f16020;color: #f16020\"><span>WHAT IS SMB MULTICHANNEL <\/span><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>In a nutshell,&nbsp;SMB Multichannel&nbsp;allows&nbsp;SMB 3.0 clients&nbsp;a way to&nbsp;establish multiple network connections to&nbsp;a storage account&nbsp;which&nbsp;is hosting an Azure&nbsp;Premium&nbsp;File&nbsp;Share. This is not new&nbsp;technology;&nbsp;it was introduced in Server 2012 and Windows 8&nbsp;to allow for this type of architecture in on-premises environments.&nbsp;This&nbsp;is good news&nbsp;as&nbsp;it means&nbsp;any modern Windows client OS&nbsp;should&nbsp;already be enabled to use it.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Here are some benefits of SMB Multichannel:&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Removes&nbsp;any single point of failure between the server and the storage, which&nbsp;may be less of an issue in the cloud but still a valid concept&nbsp;<\/li><li>Higher IOPS by utilizing&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/docs.microsoft.com\/en-us\/windows-hardware\/drivers\/network\/introduction-to-receive-side-scaling\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">Receive Side Scaling<\/a>&nbsp;<\/li><li>Increased throughput by allowing for parallel processing of multiple data streams&nbsp;<\/li><li>Ease of use&nbsp;&#8211;&nbsp;once enabled,&nbsp;the&nbsp;discovery&nbsp;of network connections and paths is&nbsp;automatic and dynamic&nbsp;<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Potential cost savings by allowing&nbsp;Azure-based&nbsp;workloads to achieve&nbsp;a&nbsp;higher&nbsp;density of&nbsp;storage processing&nbsp;per&nbsp;VM, thereby allowing organizations to reduce the number of VMs in a workload&nbsp;<\/li><li>As of now, the cost of enabling SMB Multichannel is free!&nbsp;<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h3 style=\"padding-bottom: 15px;margin-bottom: 30px;margin-top: 40px;border-bottom: 1px solid #f16020;color: #f16020\"><span>HOW TO TRY SMB MULTICHANNEL  <\/span><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>To try this new feature, you need to enable the preview in your subscription.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Use the Az PowerShell Module&nbsp;to&nbsp;run the following set of commands:<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>$context = Get-AzSubscription -SubscriptionId&nbsp;&lt;Subscription ID&gt;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Register-AzProviderFeature -FeatureName AllowSMBMultichannel -ProviderNamespace Microsoft.Storage&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Register-AzResourceProvider -ProviderNamespace Microsoft.Storage&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Once you\u2019ve&nbsp;run these commands, you can check the status by running the following command:<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Get-AzProviderFeature -FeatureName AllowSMBMultichannel -ProviderNamespace Microsoft.Storage\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"634\" height=\"85\" src=\"https:\/\/www.insentragroup.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/18\/2021\/12\/neil_hoffman_blog_2_12082021_img_1.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-7360\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.insentragroup.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/18\/2021\/12\/neil_hoffman_blog_2_12082021_img_1.jpg 634w, https:\/\/www.insentragroup.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/18\/2021\/12\/neil_hoffman_blog_2_12082021_img_1-300x40.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 634px) 100vw, 634px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Wait for the state to show as \u2018Registered\u2019, in my lab, this took about 15 mins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>After the preview is registered, just enable it on the Azure files share<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"978\" height=\"420\" src=\"https:\/\/www.insentragroup.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/18\/2021\/12\/neil_hoffman_blog_2_12082021_img_2.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-7361\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.insentragroup.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/18\/2021\/12\/neil_hoffman_blog_2_12082021_img_2.jpg 978w, https:\/\/www.insentragroup.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/18\/2021\/12\/neil_hoffman_blog_2_12082021_img_2-300x129.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.insentragroup.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/18\/2021\/12\/neil_hoffman_blog_2_12082021_img_2-768x330.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 978px) 100vw, 978px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h3 style=\"padding-bottom: 15px;margin-bottom: 30px;margin-top: 40px;border-bottom: 1px solid #f16020;color: #f16020\"><span>CURRENT LIMITATIONS <\/span><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Only Windows clients are supported<\/li><li>The maximum number of channels is four<\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/docs.microsoft.com\/en-us\/windows-server\/storage\/file-server\/smb-direct\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">SMB Direct<\/a> is not supported<\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/docs.microsoft.com\/en-us\/azure\/storage\/common\/storage-private-endpoints\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">Private endpoints<\/a> for storage accounts are not supported<\/li><li>If you\u2019re using <a href=\"https:\/\/www.insentragroup.com\/nz\/insights\/geek-speak\/professional-services\/what-is-azure-active-directory\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Active Directory<\/a> integration with the file share, then Windows Explorer cannot be used to configure NTFS permissions, you will have to use command-line tools such as <a href=\"https:\/\/docs.microsoft.com\/en-us\/windows-server\/administration\/windows-commands\/icacls\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">icacls<\/a> or <a href=\"https:\/\/docs.microsoft.com\/en-us\/powershell\/module\/microsoft.powershell.security\/set-acl\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">Set-Acl<\/a><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h3 style=\"padding-bottom: 15px;margin-bottom: 30px;margin-top: 40px;border-bottom: 1px solid #f16020;color: #f16020\"><span>FINAL THOUGHTS<\/span><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>If SMB Multichannel can be used to accelerate your workloads, and the cost is free, you should consider testing it out or you may be leaving IOPS on the table!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As always, carefully test features which are in preview and only use in production when Microsoft announces they are supported for production workloads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Catch up on more of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.insentragroup.com\/nz\/insights\/insights-search-results\/?author=Neil%20Hoffman\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">my blogs here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There is a\u00a0very exciting\u00a0feature coming (which is\u00a0already in public preview at the time of writing),\u00a0to Azure Files.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":91,"featured_media":7362,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[88,76,187,186,143,59,188,189,146],"class_list":["post-7359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cloud-and-modern-data-center","tag-active-directory","tag-azure","tag-azure-files","tag-azure-smb","tag-fslogix","tag-microsoft","tag-microsoft-smb","tag-smb-multichannel","tag-windows","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.insentragroup.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.insentragroup.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.insentragroup.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.insentragroup.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/91"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.insentragroup.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7359"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.insentragroup.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7359\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8930,"href":"https:\/\/www.insentragroup.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7359\/revisions\/8930"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.insentragroup.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.insentragroup.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.insentragroup.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.insentragroup.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}