Azure StorSimple

StorSimple- is a hybrid device that helps enterprises consolidate their storage infrastructure for primary storage, data protection, archiving, and disaster recovery on a single solution by tightly integrating with Azure storage

Currently the only ways to transfer data to azure is using on of the following techniques

1. Using Azure Storage explorer
2. Using Azure AzCopy
3. Azure Import/Export Services

Note: It might take a long time, depending on your Azure connectivity and many factors
Let's start explaining azure storsimple, the features and the models
Basic Information

• Protocol support: iSCSI
• Uses virtualization infrastructure (Hyper-V or VMware)
• Capacity: Up to 64 TB usable capacity per virtual array, while local capacity 390 GB to 6.4 TB usable capacity per virtual array (need to provision 500 GB to 8 TB of disk space)

On July 31, 2019 the StorSimple 5000/7000 series will reach end of support (EOS) status. We recommend that StorSimple 5000/7000 series customers migrate to one of the alternatives described in the document. Upgrade now

Use Cases
The StorSimple Virtual Array is best suited for infrequently accessed data. While the virtual array has a local cache to boost performance, users should assume that the device services files at the lowest tier of storage (the cloud). Each virtual array can write and read to Azure storage at approximately 100 Mbps. That link is shared across all the requests coming into the device and can become a bottleneck

1. Document management
2. SharePoint
3. File servers or Archiving for Remote Office/Branch Office (ROBO)
4. Virtual environments with VM sprawl

How does it work?
It integrates with cloud services to provides a set of management tools for a seamless view of all enterprise storage, including cloud storageStorSimple uses storage tiering to manage stored data. The current working set is stored on-premises on solid state drives (SSDs). Your data that is used less frequently is stored on hard disk drives (HDDs), and archival data is pushed to the cloud.
StorSimple also utilities deduplication and compression to reduce the amount of storage that your data consumes.
In addition to storage management, StorSimple data protection features enable you to create on-demand and scheduled backups to then store them locally or in the cloud. Backups are taken in the form of incremental snapshots, which means that they can be created and restored quickly

References
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/storsimple/storsimple-ova-overview
https://www.evros.ie/blog/top-ten-benefits-of-microsoft-azure-storsimple/