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
To assist you in choosing, the five disk kinds are compared in the following table.
| Ultra Disk | Premium SSD v2 | Premium SSD | Standard SSD | Standard HDD | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Disk type | SSD | SSD | SSD | SSD | HDD |
| Scenario | IO-intensive workloads such as SAP HANA, top tier databases (for example, SQL, Oracle), and other transaction-heavy workloads. | Production and performance-sensitive workloads that consistently require low latency and high IOPS and throughput | Production and performance sensitive workloads | Web servers, lightly used enterprise applications and dev/test | Backup, non-critical, infrequent access |
| Max disk size | 65,536 GiB | 65,536 GiB | 32,767 GiB | 32,767 GiB | 32,767 GiB |
| Max throughput | 10,000 MB/s | 1,200 MB/s | 900 MB/s | 750 MB/s | 500 MB/s |
| Max IOPS | 400,000 | 80,000 | 20,000 | 6,000 | 2,000, 3,000* |
| Usable as OS Disk? | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
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.
To assist you in choosing, the following table compares disk sizes and performance caps.
| Disk Size (GiB) | IOPS Cap | Throughput Cap (MB/s) |
|---|---|---|
| 4 | 1,200 | 300 |
| 8 | 2,400 | 600 |
| 16 | 4,800 | 1,200 |
| 32 | 9,600 | 2,400 |
| 64 | 19,200 | 4,900 |
| 128 | 38,400 | 9,800 |
| 256 | 76,800 | 10,000 |
| 512 | 153,600 | 10,000 |
| 1,024 | 307,200 | 10,000 |
| 2,048-65,536 (sizes in this range increasing in increments of 1 TiB) | 400,000 | 10,000 |
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.
