Azure Data Box offline data transfer solution allows you send petabytes of data into Azure Storage in a quick, inexpensive, and reliable manner. The secure data transfer is accelerated by hardware transfer devices that enable offline data ingestion to Azure.

We’re excited to announce several new service capabilities including:

• General availability of self-encrypted drives Azure Data Box Disk SKU that enables fast transfers on Linux systems.
• Support for data ingestion to multiple blob access tiers in a single order.
• Preview of cross-region data transfers for seamless data ingest from source country or region to select Azure destinations in a different country or region.
• Support in Azure Storage Mover for online catch-up data copy of any changes active workloads may have generated post offline migrations with Azure Data Box.

Additionally, we’re happy to share the Azure Data Box cloud service is HIPAA/BAA, PCI 3DS and PCI DSS certified. More details on each of these new capabilities can be found below.

Azure Data Box Disk: self-encrypted drives

Azure Data Box Disk is now generally available in a hardware-encrypted option in the European Union, United States, and Japan. These self-encrypting drives (SEDs) use the dedicated/native/specialized hardware for data encryption, without any software dependency from the host machine. These SEDs use the specialized native hardware present on the disk for data encryption, without any software dependencies on the host machine. With this offering, we now support comparable data transfer rates on Linux as that of our BitLocker-encrypted Data Box Disk drives on Windows.

Azure Data Box Disk SED is popular with some of our Automotive customers as it connects directly to the in-car Linux-based data loggers through a SATA interface, thereby eliminating the need for a secondary data copy from another in-car storage and saving time. Here is how Xylon, manufacturer of automotive data loggers uses Azure Data Box Disk: self encrypted drives to migrate Advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) sensor data to Azure: 

Through the cooperation with the Microsoft Azure team, we have enabled direct data logging to the hardware-encrypted Data Box Disks plugged into our logiRECORDER Automotive HIL Video Logger. It enables our common customers to transfer precious data from the test fleet to the cloud in the simplest and fastest possible way, without wasting time on unnecessary data copying and reformatting along the way.” 

—Jura Ivanovic, Product Director, Automotive HIL Video Logger, Xylon 

Learn more about Data Box Disk: self encrypted drives and get started migrating your on-premises data to Azure. 

Multi-access tier ingestion support

You can now transfer data to different blob access tiers including Cold Tier in a single Azure Data Box order. Previously, Azure Data Box only supported transferring data to the default access tiers of Azure Storage Accounts. For example, if you wanted to move data to the Cool tier in an Azure Storage Account that has the default set to hot, you would have had to first move the data to hot tier via Azure Data Box and then leverage life cycle management to move the data to the Cool tier after it’s uploaded to Azure. 

We have now introduced new “access tier” folders in the folder hierarchy on the device. All data that you copy to the “Cool” folder will have it’s access tier set as cool, irrespective of the default access tier of the destination Storage account, and similarly for data copied to other folders representing the various access tiers. Learn more about multi-access tier ingestion support. 

Cross-region data transfer to select Azure regions 

We’re excited to share that Azure Data Box cross-region data transfer capabilities, now in preview, supports seamless ingest of on-premises data from a source country or region to select Azure destinations in a different country or region. For example, with this capability you can now copy on-premises data from Singapore or India to the West United States Azure destination region. Note that the Azure Data Box device isn’t shipped across commerce boundaries. Instead, it’s transported from and to an Azure data Center within the originating country or region where the on-premises data resides. Data transfer to the destination Azure region takes place across the Azure network without incurring additional fees. 

Learn more about this capability and the supported country or region combinations for Azure Data Box, Azure Data Box Disk, and Azure Data Box Heavy respectively. 

Support for online catch-up copy with Azure Storage Mover Integration 

If your data source has any active workloads, it will likely make changes while your Azure Data Box is in transit to Azure. Consequently, you’ll also need to bring those changes to your cloud storage, before a workload can be cut over to it. We’re happy to announce that you can now combine the Azure Storage Mover and Data Box services to form an effective file and folder migration solution to minimize downtime for your workloads. Storage Mover jobs can detect differences between your on-site and cloud storage to effectively transfer any updates and new files not previously captured by your Data Box transfer. For example, if only a file’s metadata (such as permissions) has changed, Azure Storage Mover will upload only the new metadata instead of the entire file content. 

Learn more about how catch-up copies with Azure Storage Mover’s merge and mirror copy mode can help transfer only the delta data to Azure.

Certifications

The Azure Data Box cloud service has achieved HIPAA/BAA, PCI 3DS & PCI DSS certifications. These certifications have been key requests from many of our customers across the healthcare and financial sectors respectively, and we’re happy to have achieved the compliance status to enable our customers’ data transfer needs.

Additional product updates

• Support for up to 4 TB Azure files across the product family. 

• Support for data transfer to “Poland Central” and “Italy North” Azure regions. 

• Transfers to Premium Azure Files and Blob Archive tiers now supported with Data Box Disk. 

• The data copy service, which significantly improves the ingestion and upload time for small files, is now generally available.

Our goal is to continually enhance the simplicity of your offline data transfers, and your input is invaluable. Should you have any suggestions or feedback regarding Azure Data Box, feel free to reach out via email at DataBox@microsoft.com. We look forward to you reviewing your feedback and comments.

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