Transfer files from Azure PaaS VM to IaaS VM

Question

On an Azure PaaS virtual machine I have some rather large files that I would like to transfer to an Azure IaaS virtual machine. I can think of a few ways to do this: FTP, SMB, but I have no idea which method would be the "best".

Has anyone done this before? Any suggestions to get me started?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Have you considered using Azure blob storage? It's as fast as using a local drive if you're in the same data center. If you need to transfer these files programmatically, there is a REST-based API or .NET wrappers around it.

Otherwise, you can just use any one of the free or commercial tools to do so, like this one: http://azurestorageexplorer.codeplex.com/

Answer 2

Transferring files to an IaaS VM can be a bit of a pain as there's no elegant way to do it that I can tell. The options we've used are:

1. FTP onto the machine by running an FTP server application inside the VM
2. Open an RDP connection with a shared clipboard and/or hard disks and copy the file(s)
3. Create a VPN and copy the files via UNC
4. Use the new Azure File Service feature recently announced into preview ( http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsazurestorage/archive/2014/05/12/introducing-microsoft-azure-file-service.aspx) then use AzCopy (http://aka.ms/azcopy) to transfer the files into blob storage

Option 4 is probably the most elegant, but equally the most complicated, as it involves signing up for the feature preview then getting everything working. It would however allow you to access the files via IaaS across multiple machines as well as accessing the files via any PaaS solutions you might have.