Azure Drive-Based Import Export Service

The Azure Import Export service uses customer-supplied hard drives to securely transfer large volumes of data in and out of Azure Blob storage accounts. The service could significantly reduce the time to upload and download data and offers other advantages over Internet transfer. The service has limitations, including drive size and number of drives per transfer job, and customers are responsible for encryption and compliance with any jurisdictional data-handling regulations. The turnaround speed of copying data and shipping hard drives may also limit the service to specific uses.

Transferring Large Volumes of Data

The Azure Import Export service uses customer-supplied hard drives, BitLocker encryption, and specific shipping carriers to securely transfer large volumes of data in and out of Azure Blob storage accounts.

Potential uses of the service include the following:

Long-term archival. An insurance company, for example, can schedule a monthly transfer of on-premises closed claims data (which typically contains large volumes of scanned PDFs, documents, and images) for archiving in Azure Blob storage. The storage service provides a persistent, redundant, online storage solution that could enable the company to meet regulatory archive requirements and avoid purchasing large on-premises storage solutions for rarely accessed data.