Best way to regularly copy large amounts of data to Azure

Q. What is the best way to routinely copy large amounts of data to Azure?

A. Azure has an import/export service that allows data to be sent to Azure via physical media however there is a latency due to the shipping of the media and time to import. Another option would be to combine a high bandwidth ExpressRoute connection (dedicated connection from on-premises to Azure that goes up to 10 Gbps) and the AzCopy utility which copies data to/from Azure storage accounts.

AzCopy can be downloaded from https://aka.ms/downloadazcopy. To use AzCopy the storage account key is required which can be found via the Access keys tab of the storage account in the portal or using PowerShell (http://windowsitpro.com/azure/get-storage-keys-using-powershell-azurerm or http://windowsitpro.com/azure/use-powershell-obtain-azure-storage-account-key).

The syntax is simple (the /s means a recursive copy including all sub-folders):

Azcopy /source: /dest: /destkey: /s