Difference between new and classic accounts in Azure

Question

Azure has Storage accounts and Storage accounts (classic) in the Azure Portal.

What are the differences between the two? Is there a reason to upgrade from a classic vault account to a new account?

Answer 1

Classic vault accounts are created using the existing service management API (the REST API stack, available over the past few years). New storage accounts are created using the new Azure Resource Manager (ARM) API (which is also wrapped in PowerShell and the CLI). In the end, they provide the same resources for your applications, but they are created / managed in different ways, and there are several nuanced differences (for example, the possibility of resource tags created using ARM scripts).

You cannot convert a classic vault account (or any classic resource) to a newer type. You still don’t need to if you are not trying to combine resources from classic and new, for example, adding ARM-based virtual machines to a virtual network based on the classical interface or creating a virtual ARM-based virtual machine from a VHD image while sitting on a classic storage account ( and for this example you can always just copy vhd to a new repository account). Note that for shared storage use (blobs / tables / queues) you just need a URI and a primary (or secondary) key. With their help, you can access your storage resources from anywhere, from any VM / website / etc., regardless of whether you use storage access from classic or new virtual machines, for example.

Check out this link for a general list of differences between classic and new resources.

Answer 2

One of the benefits of the new compared to classic storage accounts is Storage Service Encryption (SSE) :

Q: I have a classic repository account. Can I enable SSE?

A: No, SSE is only supported for resource storage accounts.

Q: How can I encrypt data in a classic storage account?

A: You can create a new resource storage account and copy data using AzCopy from an existing classic storage account to a newly created resource storage account.

Answer 3

Now you can transfer classic resources to the new ARM model. I myself did a few, and it worked as expected. Here is a guide from Microsoft:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/virtual-machines-windows-ps-migration-classic-resource-manager

Answer 4

In addition to @David Makogon's answer, the new Azure Storage offers reselling resources for sub-subscriptions.

This means that you can buy storage from Azure and sell it to your customers.