Opening Word and Excel doc on Azure file share extremely slow

Question

I have an Azure VM that has a mapped drive to an Azure File Share. I can open the Word and Excel documents on the Azure file share but they take up to 2 minutes to open. Both the VM and the File Share are in the same region. I can open a Notepad file in less than a second on the Azure VM with the Notepad doc in the Azure File Share as well. Any ideas? Thanks in advance for the help. :(

Answer 1

@Jim Welcome to Microsoft Q&A Forum, Thank you for posting here!

There is could be several reason in delay(This behavior may occur if the connection to the network location is lost during the time that your Office program is opening the file.) Check there are any add-ins is causing the issue/clear cache/ Restart the VM/

There is no throttling or performance issue on the Azure File Share Service from Azure Storage Account level(for specify services in upload/download/launching any documents, files application or more),

This article explains "Request Was Taking Too Long" when you open a workbook in Excel Online

You should also take into account the performance guidelines from the Azure Storage Team

Troubleshoot Azure file shares performance issues

You can use Azure Speed test tool: https://www.azurespeed.com/Azure/Upload
Note that these tests could potentially be affected by the configuration of the client machine (for example, the browser the you are using).

When testing network throughput performance in Azure, it's best to use a tool that targets the network for testing and minimizes the use of other resources that could impact performance. NTTTCP is recommended. Azure throughput analyzer

Please let us know if you have any further queries. I’m happy to assist you further.
Looking forward for reply!

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Answer 2

I spend some time with procmon analyzing what happened and found that Word/Explorer is trying to open \storageaccount\IPC$ to query other shares on the storage account. This is not supported on Azure file shares resulting in an +- 30 seconds delay when opening files in Word & Excel. I managed to solve this by creating a DFS Namespace server, which handles the IPC$ access, and files open fast again! It looks better than a long storage account name as well. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/storage/files/files-manage-namespaces?tabs=azure-portal#configure-folders-and-folder-targets Hope this helps someone. Check out my blog: potsolutions.nl

Answer 3

I spend some time with procmon analyzing what happened and found that Word/Explorer is trying to open \storageaccount\IPC$ to query other shares on the storage account. This is not supported on Azure file shares resulting in an +- 30 seconds delay when opening files in Word & Excel. I managed to solve this by creating a DFS Namespace server, which handles the IPC$ access, and files open fast again! It looks better then a long storage account name as well. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/storage/files/files-manage-namespaces?tabs=azure-portal#configure-folders-and-folder-targets Hope this helps someone. Check out my blog: potsolutions.nl