A research institute must move about 400 TB of microscope images into Azure Blob Storage. Its office uplink is 100 Mbps, and the project cannot wait months for the transfer. Which approach is most practical?
Show answer and explanation
Answer: B
At 100 Mbps, 400 TB would take on the order of a year to upload, so an online transfer is impractical. Azure Data Box Heavy is an offline appliance that is shipped to the site, filled with data, and shipped back for ingestion into Blob Storage. A VPN still crosses the same uplink. ExpressRoute would require ordering and provisioning a circuit with recurring cost, which is hard to justify for a one-time bulk load.
Why the other options are wrong
- A. A VPN still crosses the same 100 Mbps office link, so AzCopy would need roughly a year for 400 TB. The bottleneck is the uplink, not the tunnel.
- C. A 10 Gbps ExpressRoute circuit could move the data much faster, but provisioning takes weeks and the recurring circuit cost is poorly justified for a one-time load.
- D. Azure File Sync keeps files synchronized between servers and cloud shares for ongoing access. It is not a one-time bulk ingest tool and still uses the same network link.