#azurediskstorage

Azure is thrilled to present the most recent developments in Ultra disks and Premium SSD v2 (Pv2), the upcoming generation of Azure disc storage. For Pv2 and Ultra discs, they have improved backup and disaster recovery capabilities to make it easier for you to safeguard your workloads. Azure has also enhanced the security protocols for Virtual Machines (VMs) using Pv2 and Ultra.

For scenarios ranging from input/output (IO)-intensive workloads like SAP High-performance Analytic Appliance (SAP HANA) to general purpose applications across Relational Database Management System (RDBMS), SQL, and NoSQL databases, Pv2 and Ultra discs offer high throughput, high input/output operations per second (IOPS), and low latency. According to a 2023 GigaOm research, Pv2 offers an unmatched price-performance gain of 23% over the rival cloud, while Ultra offers optimal performance with low latency of less than one microsecond.

Azure managed disk types

There are now five disc types available with Azure managed disks, each designed to cater to a particular customer scenario:

Ultra Disks

Premium SSD v2

Premium SSDs (solid-state drives)

Standard SSDs

Standard HDDs (hard disk drives)

Comparison of disk types

Azure Ultra Disks

The best storage solution for Azure virtual machines (VMs) is Azure Ultra Disks. It’s performance settings can be altered without requiring a VM restart. Top-tier databases, transaction-heavy workloads, and data-intensive workloads like SAP HANA are good fits for Ultra Disks.

It can only be generated as empty disks and must be utilised as data disks. Premium solid-state drives (SSDs) are the best choice for operating system (OS) disks.

Incredibly large disk size

By default, it support up to 100 TiB per region per subscription; however, larger capacities can be requested. You can ask Azure Support for assistance, seek a quota increase, or request an increase in capacity.

Superb Disk efficiency

The low sub-millisecond latencies, provided IOPS, and throughput that these are meant to deliver are guaranteed to occur 99.99% of the time. Additionally, it provide a flexible performance configuration approach that lets you set up throughput and IOPS separately, both before and after the disk is provisioned. It’s performance can be changed four times in a 24-hour period. These are available in multiple fixed capacities, spanning from 4 GiB to 64 TiB.

Azure Ultra disk IOPS

IOPS limitations of 300 IOPS/GiB are supported by Ultra Disks, with a maximum of 400,000 IOPS per disk. Make sure the chosen disk’s IOPS is lower than the virtual machine’s IOPS limit in order to reach the disk’s target IOPS. Higher IOPS Ultra Disks can be shared to accommodate more virtual machines (VMs).

A baseline minimum of 100 IOPS is guaranteed overall, with a minimum of 1 IOPS/GiB guaranteed for each disk. For instance, the minimum IOPS for a 4-GiB Ultra Disk that you provisioned is 100, not 4.

High-speed disk throughput

A single Ultra Disk can only handle 256 kB/s of throughput per supplied IOPS, with a maximum of 10,000 MB/s per disk (MB/s = 10^6 Bytes per second). With a baseline minimum of 1 MB/s overall, the minimum assured throughput per disk is 4kB/s for each supplied IOPS.

Without removing the disk from the virtual system, Ultra Disk IOPS and throughput performance can be changed at runtime. It may take up to an hour for a disk’s performance resizing procedure to take effect once it is issued. Within a 24-hour period, up to four performance resize procedures are allowed.

Insufficient performance bandwidth capacity may cause a performance resize operation to fail.

Limitations of Ultra Disk

The limitations of Ultra Disk are listed below:

An OS disk cannot be utilised with this disk.

Azure Compute Gallery cannot be utilised with Ultra Disks.

The only infrastructure options that Ultra Disks now support are Single VM and Availability zone.

Availability sets are not supported by Ultra Disks.

An Ultra Disk cannot be made larger without removing the Ultra Disk or deallocating the virtual machine.

At this time, existing disks are unable to transform into Ultra Disks. They have to be moved.

Customer-managed keys for Ultra disks are not supported at this time by Azure Government or Azure China.

VMs using Ultra Disks are not supported for Azure Disk Encryption. Rather, you ought to utilise platform-managed or customer-managed encryption at rest with keys.

VMs using Ultra Disks are not supported for Azure Site Recovery.

Disk caching is not supported by Ultra Disks.

There are further restrictions on the use of snapshots.

For virtual machines using Ultra Disks, Azure Backup support is typically available. When using this disk, Azure Backup has restrictions.

In addition to supporting 512E sector sizes, Ultra Discs come with a 4k physical sector size by default. While the majority of applications can run with 4k sector sizes, some need 512-byte sector sizes. For instance, release 12.2 or later of Oracle Database is needed to support 4k native disks. A 512-byte sector size is necessary for Oracle Database versions prior to that.

Ultra Disk pricing

Microsoft Azure’s high-performance, low-latency Ultra Disc Storage is designed for IO-intensive workloads. Pricing for Azure Ultra Disc Storage depends on numerous factors:

Cost: Ultra Discs vary in size and cost more. From 4 GiB to 64 TiB.

Your disk’s provisioned IOPS cost you. Ultra Discs can handle 160,000 IOPS each.

It can provide MB/s throughput. Up to 4,000 MB/s per disc is possible.

Area: Azure disK pricing varies by area.

Use the Azure Pricing Calculator or Azure Ultra Disk Storage pricing page for precise pricing.

As of Latest Update: Example Pricing

Disk Size: Per GiB per month prices may be set. Example: $0.000122/GiB/hour.

A charge per provided IOPS may exist. One IOPS per hour costs $0.000073.

Provisioned Throughput: $0.000024 per MB/s/hour.

Pricing Calculation Example

For a 1 TiB Ultra DisK with 20,000 IOPS and 500 MB/s throughput in a specific region, compute the monthly cost:

Disk Size Cost:

1 TiB = 1024 GiB

Cost per GiB: $0.000122 per hour

Monthly cost = 1024 GiB * $0.000122/hour * 730 hours (average month)

= $91.09

Provisioned IOPS Cost:

20,000 IOPS * $0.000073 per IOPS per hour * 730 hours

= $1,066

Provisioned Throughput Cost:

500 MB/s * $0.000024 per MB/s per hour * 730 hours

= $8.76

Total Monthly Cost:

Disk Size: $91.09

IOPS: $1,066

Throughput: $8.76

Total = $1,165.85

The area, service agreements, and discounts or promotions may affect these rates. Azure’s official resources always have the newest prices.

Premium SSD v2 (Pv2)

Premium SSD v2 is typically less expensive than Premium SSDs and provides better performance. Premium SSD v2 (Pv2) discs provide unique performance adjustments (capacity, throughput, and IOPS) that you can make at any moment to match changing performance requirements while keeping workloads economical. A gaming application might require a lot of IOPS, but only during peak hours, or a transaction-intensive database might require a lot of IOPS at a modest size. Because of this, Premium SSD v2 can offer the best price-performance for the majority of general-purpose workloads.

Premium SSD v2(Pv2) is suitable for a wide range of workloads on virtual machines or stateful containers, including big data/analytics, gaming, SQL server, Oracle, MariaDB, SAP, Cassandra, and Mongo DB.

Although 512E sector size can also be used, Premium SSD v2(Pv2) supports 4k physical sector size by default. Certain applications require 512 byte sector sizes, even if the majority of them work with 4k sector sizes. For instance, release 12.2 or later of Oracle Database is needed to support 4k native discs.

Azure Premium SSD vs Premium SSD v2

The Premium SSD v2 lacks specific sizes, in contrast to Premium SSDs. A Premium SSD v2 allows you to customise the supported size to your liking and make fine-tuned performance tweaks without experiencing any downtime. Although Premium SSD v2(Pv2) doesn’t allow host caching, it greatly benefits from lower latency, which solves some of the same fundamental issues that host caching does. The flexibility to change IOPS, throughput, and size as necessary also spares you from the maintenance burden of stripping drives to fit your requirements.

Premium SSD v2 Limitations

The OS cannot be installed on a Premium SSD v2 disc.

Azure Compute Gallery is not compatible with premium SSD v2 discs.

Premium SSD v2 discs are now limited to certain areas of availability.

At this time, only zonal virtual machines (VMs) can be connected to Premium SSD v2 discs.

Customer-managed keys for Premium SSD v2 discs are not supported at this time by Azure Government or Azure China.

With certain restrictions and in certain areas, Premium SSD v2 discs offer encryption at the host. See Encryption at host for additional details.

Virtual machines (VMs) using Premium SSD v2 discs are not supported for Azure Disc Encryption (guest VM encryption via Bitlocker/DM-Crypt). We advise using platform-managed or customer-managed keys for encryption while at rest. Premium SSD v2 is compatible with this method.

At this time, VMs in Availability Sets cannot have Premium SSD v2 discs attached to them.

The Premium SSD v2 disc is not compatible with Azure Site Recovery on virtual machines.

A Premium SSD v2 cannot have its size increased without removing the disc or deallocating the virtual machine.

Host caching is not supported by Premium SSDv2.

Azure Premium SSD v2 availability

See the Premium SSD v2(Pv2) row on the Products available by Region page for a list of the regions that are currently supported.

Only a few availability zones presently offer Premium SSD v2 in the following regions:

Italy North (two zones of availability) Central Spain (One Zone of Availability)

See What’s new for Azure Disc Storage or Azure Updates to find out when support for specific regions was implemented.

Premium SSD v2 performance

Providing sub-millisecond latencies and provided IOPS and throughput 99.9% of the time is the design goal of Pv2(premium SSD v2) discs. You may customise a disk’s capacity, throughput, and IOPS according to your workload requirements with Premium SSD v2 discs, giving you greater flexibility and lower prices. The price of your disc is determined by each of these factors. A Premium SSD v2 disk’s performance can be changed four times in a 24-hour period.

Premium SSD v2 capacity

The capacities of Pv2(Premium SSD v2) range in 1-GiB increments from 1 GiB to 64 TiBs. For specifics, refer to the pricing page. You are invoiced on a per GiB ratio.

By default, Pv2(Premium SSD v2) provides up to 100 TiB per area per subscription; however, it can accommodate larger capacities upon request. You can ask Azure Support for assistance, seek a quota increase, or request an increase in capacity.

Premium SSD v2 IOPS

There is a complimentary baseline IOPS of 3000 on all Pv2(Premium SSD v2) discs. A disk’s maximum IOPS can reach 80,000 IOPS after 6 GiB, increasing at a rate of 500 per GiB after that. Thus, the maximum IOPS for an 8 GiB disc is 4,000, and the maximum IOPS for a 10 GiB disc is 5,000. A disc needs to have at least 160 GiBs in order to support 80,000 IOPS. Your disc will cost more if you boost your IOPS over 3000.

Premium SSD v2 throughput

A free baseline throughput of 125 MB/s is available on all Premium SSD v2 discs. The maximum set throughput rises by 0.25 MB/s per set IOPS after 6 GiB. A disc with 3,000 IOPS can have a maximum throughput of 750 MB/s. This disc needs to have its IOPS raised in order to increase throughput beyond 750 MB/s. The maximum throughput that may be configured, for instance, is 1,000 if the IOPS is raised to 4,000. For discs with 5,000 IOPS or more, the maximum throughput supported is 1,200 MB/s. Your disc will cost more if you increase the throughput above 125.

Premium SSD v2 sizes

By default, the Premium SSD v2(Pv2) offers a physical sector size of 4k. Additionally supported is a 512E sector size. Certain applications require 512-byte sector sizes, even though the majority work with 4k sector sizes. For instance, release 12.2 or later of Oracle Database is needed to support 4k native discs.

Premium SSD v2 pricing

Azure Premium SSD v2 cost depends on region, disc size, and performance tier. The second-generation Premium SSD has better performance and scalability. The following things can affect pricing:

Bigger discs cost more. In gigabytes, disc sizes are measured.

Performance Tier: Azure offers several performance tiers with varied IOPs and throughput. Tiers with higher performance cost more.

Location: SSD prices vary by location.

Provisioned IOPS and Throughput: Some configurations charge by the amount you supply.

The Azure Pricing Calculator lets you enter your needs for an accurate price estimate.

These hypothetical numbers illustrate the pricing structure, however actual prices may vary:

Disk Size:

100 GB: $0.15 per GB/month

500 GB: $0.14 per GB/month

1 TB: $0.13 per GB/month

Performance Tier:

P1 (500 IOPS, 100 MBps): $1 per provisioned IOPS/month

P2 (2000 IOPS, 250 MBps): $0.75 per provisioned IOPS/month

P3 (7500 IOPS, 1000 MBps): $0.50 per provisioned IOPS/month

Region Example:

US East: Standard pricing

Europe West: 10% more than US East

Asia Pacific: 15% more than US East

For current Premium SSD v2 pricing, check Azure’s official resources or contact support.