Introduction

SagarGupta

Author: Cloud Storage Product Team - Nitya Gupta, Prabu Arjunan, Sagar Gupta

Introduction

In enterprise Azure environments, provisioning storage should fit seamlessly into your development workflow. Yet for many teams, deploying Azure NetApp Files (ANF) requires constantly switching between the IDE and Azure Portal—a manual process that interrupts coding momentum and pulls developers away from strategic work.

What if you could simplify that experience and complete provisioning in minutes instead of hours?

The Azure NetApp Files VS Code Extension brings automation and intelligence directly into your development environment. By reducing manual steps and minimizing context switching, organizations can shorten provisioning time from hours to minutes and lower configuration errors, all while maintaining compliance and optimizing costs through AI-driven insights. This approach helps teams accelerate projects and keep developers focused on building, not navigating portals.

The Traditional Approach

Time to Deliver: ~1 Day (8 Hours)

Let’s look at "Aarav," a Senior Azure DevOps Engineer. His task is standard but heavy: provision Azure NetApp Files volumes for a production application including database tiers (Standard service level), app tiers (Flexible service level), and backup storage.

Without automation, Aarav’s day is consumed by manual overhead:

Manual Configuration: Spending significant time outside the platform—cross-referencing documentation, planning capacity pools, and validating service levels—before even beginning the deployment in the Azure Portal.

Policy Management: Manually applying snapshot policies and export rules while tracking everything in spreadsheets, increasing the risk of error.

Final Validation: Running connectivity tests that often reveal configuration drift, requiring him to troubleshoot typos or missing assignments before deployment.

The Real Cost: High error rates, configuration drift, and "context switching" that impacts engineering focus.

The Modern Approach

Time to Deliver: ~30 Minutes

With the Azure NetApp Files VS Code Extension, Aarav stays in his IDE, shifting his workflow from manual clicking to streamlined coding. At the heart of this experience is @anf, an intelligent chat participant that transforms storage management into a seamless conversation. By interpreting natural language commands, @anf empowers developers to instantly generate production-ready ARM templates, inspect critical resource details like capacity and performance tiers, and receive AI-driven optimization recommendations—all without ever leaving the editor. This capability removes the friction of portal navigation, enabling teams to provision, validate, and optimize enterprise-grade storage with the speed and precision of simple text prompts.

Step 1: Generate Infrastructure (10 Minutes)

Aarav doesn't write JSON from scratch. He opens GitHub Copilot chat in VS Code and types:

@anf generate ARM template for production volumes with premium SKU for database

The AI assistant instantly generates a validated, production-ready ARM template with correctly configured capacity pools and volumes.

Step 2: Instant Validation (10 Minutes)

Once deployed, there is no need to hunt through portal tabs to verify the setup. Aarav simply asks:

@anf what is this volume

The extension returns comprehensive details on size, tier, and active policies directly in the editor.

Step 3: Optimization & Insights (5 Minutes)

To ensure long-term efficiency, Aarav runs an AI analysis on the new resources:

@anf analyze this volume

The extension provides immediate feedback on performance optimization, cost efficiency, and capacity planning.

Key Capabilities

The extension provides three core AI-powered commands that cover the entire lifecycle:

Command	Function	Business Value
@anf generate ARM template	Creates production-ready ARM templates for volumes and capacity pools.	Eliminates manual writing; ensures IaC best practices.
@anf what is this volume	Retrieves resource details (size, tier, performance).	Reduces portal visits and context switching.
@anf analyze this volume	AI analysis of cost and performance.	Drives continuous improvement and cost savings.

The ROI: Why This Matters

Shifting from portal-driven workflows to AI-guided, code-first provisioning delivers measurable impact.

Efficiency Gains

Metric	Before (Manual)	After (AI-Assisted)	Improvement
Time to Provision	8 Hours	30 Minutes	93% Faster
Context Switches	15–20 Portal Visits	0–1 Visit	Higher Focus
Configuration	30+ Manual Clicks	1 Command	Lower Risk

Summary

For Azure-focused teams, this extension simplifies infrastructure management, reduces risk, and accelerates delivery—all without leaving your coding environment. It’s a practical way to keep developers productive and projects on track. The VS Code Extension is essentially your “Azure NetApp Files Storage Copilot (Agent) for Code”!