Azure Files Premium is the most suitable recommendation as it uniquely satisfies all the specified requirements. It is built on solid-state drives (SSDs), ensuring the high performance necessary for FSLogix profile containers. As a fully managed Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering, it provides serverless SMB file shares, which significantly minimizes administrative overhead compared to building and managing file servers. While Azure NetApp Files also offers high performance on SSDs, Azure Files Premium is generally more cost-effective for typical AVD deployments, thereby meeting the "minimize cost" requirement more effectively. It provides the best balance of performance, low administration, and cost for this scenario.

A. Azure NetApp Files: While it uses SSDs and is a managed service, it is a premium, high-performance solution that is typically more expensive than Azure Files Premium, thus not meeting the "minimize cost" requirement.

B. Azure Files Standard: This option uses Hard Disk Drives (HDDs), not SSDs, and therefore fails to meet the primary performance requirement for storing FSLogix containers.

C. Azure Blob Storage Premium: This is an object storage service and does not natively support the Server Message Block (SMB) protocol required by FSLogix. Using it would require a complex setup, violating the "minimize administrative effort" requirement.

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1. Microsoft Learn

"Storage options for FSLogix profile containers in Azure Virtual Desktop."

Section: Azure Files

Content: "Azure Files offers two tiers of storage: premium and standard... Premium file shares are backed by solid-state drives (SSDs) and are recommended for use with Azure Virtual Desktop. Standard file shares are backed by hard disk drives (HDDs)." This directly supports Azure Files Premium (D) for its SSD backing and disqualifies Azure Files Standard (B).

2. Microsoft Learn

"FSLogix profile container and Azure Files."

Section: Prerequisites

Content: "A host pool with session hosts that have a line of sight to a domain controller and name resolution to the domain. The session hosts must be able to reach the Azure Files share over the network. An SMB file share hosted on a standalone Windows File Server

Azure Files (recommended)

or Azure NetApp Files." This confirms that Azure Files and Azure NetApp Files are the primary supported managed services

while implicitly excluding Blob storage (C).

3. Microsoft Learn

"Compare Azure Files and Azure NetApp Files."

Section: Summary table

Content: The documentation compares the services

highlighting that Azure Files Premium is a cost-effective

fully managed SMB cloud file share service on SSDs

ideal for performance-sensitive workloads. Azure NetApp Files is positioned for extreme performance workloads

which typically comes at a higher cost

making Azure Files Premium the better choice for cost minimization (A vs. D).