Azure now supports hosting File Shares on Premium backed storage media (SSDs) and are useful for IO-intensive workloads, hosting databases and high-performance computing (HPC).

The easiest way to create a Premium File Share is using the Azure CLI

az group create --name myresourcegroup --location westeurope
az storage account create `
--name mypremiumfileshare `
--resource-group myresourcegroup `
--location westeurope `
--sku Premium_LRS `
--kind FileStorage

Some limitiations on Premium File Shares:

  • Only supports LRS (Locally redundant storage)
  • There is no automatic way to convert a File Share on Standard storage to Premium.

There are alternate ways to get the content stored in Standard storage to Premium

  • Azure Import/Export
  • Azure File Sync
  • AzCopy
  • Robocopy

For more information on Azure Premium File Shares, visit the Microsoft Docs.