Microsoft recently announced the availability of the new managed service Azure Data Share, specially designed for sharing data between different organizations. Azure Data Share allows you to share and combine data in an easy way, in order to ensure effective business collaboration between different realities, in respect of safety and governance. In this article are covered the principles of operation and shows the procedure to be followed for the corresponding configuration.
To date, the most commonly used solutions for the exchange and sharing of corporate data are based on the File Transfer Protocol (FTP) or on custom Web API, which in addition to having to manage a specific infrastructure, are unable to adhere to corporate standards in terms of security and governance. Furthermore, these solutions are not suitable for the exchange of large volumes of data. Azure Data Share is a fully managed service with the aim of simplifying, secure and controlled the process of sharing data between different business realities. Is not required to configure any specific infrastructure and service can rapidly scale to meet big data sharing needs. Meanwhile, your safety is critical for a service of this kind and Azure Data Share exploits the main intrinsic safety measures in Azure for data protection.
Activation of the service
The activation of the service Azure Data Share must be carried out primarily by those who must share data, as follows.
Figure 1 - Starting the process of creation
Figure 2 - Parameters required by the creation process
The deployment is very fast and after activating the service you can begin the process of sharing data.
Using the solution
Azure Data Share has an intuitive interface, can be used directly from the Azure portal, and with a few simple steps you can choose what information to share and with whom to share them.
Figure 3 – Start the process of sharing
Figure 4 – Definition of the name and details of the share
It is possible to govern the use of the data by binding specific terms of use for each share that is created. To allow receiving data, recipients must accept the terms of use specified.
Figure 5 – Added the Dataset and the selection of the type
For data sharing today you can use as Dataset Azure Blob Storage and Azure Data Lake Storage, but soon will be introduced also new Azure data sources.
Figure 6 – Selection of the container that contains the data to be shared
Figure 7 - Added email address of the person you share files
The service also provides the ability to schedule the sharing of new content or changes, while maintaining complete control of any share.
Figure 8 - Scheduling of snapshots
Figure 9 - Review and creation of the share
The recipient will receive at the end of the sharing process a notification by email.
Figure 10 - Notification received via email from the person to whom you want to send data
Figure 11 - Invitation of Data Share from the Azure portal
One who receives the shared data must have a service Azure Data Share to see the shared data.
Figure 12 – Accept invitation to Date Share
In accepts the invitation you must specify the target, in this case the storage account, on which to bring the data received. Such content you can choose to keep it synchronized according to the scheduling specified by the sender.
Figure 13 - Configuration of the storage account target
Figure 14 - Detail of a receipt sharing
In the received shares it is also given the option to manually trigger a snapshot (full or incremental).
Conclusions
In a world where the amount, the type and variety of data is growing, you must have services that enable organizations to work together by sharing information of any kind and size. Thanks to the Azure Data Share you can share data, between different companies, in a simple way, safe and respecting the governance policies. Adding new datasets for data sharing, expected in the short term, will make this service even more complete and effective.
