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Disk Drives in Microsoft Azure

In this article, we will discuss disk drives in Microsoft Azure. But before we move forward, let us discuss some of the important concepts.

Hard Disk Drive (HDD) Vs. Solid State Drive (SSD)

HDD is the traditional storage disk drive that uses a mechanical platter for moving read and write head in order to access data.

SSD is the new type of storage device that uses flash memory to access the data faster.

Data Tier

Data tier means, storing the data on different tiers based on its accessibility. There are three different types of access tiers

      1. Hot tier - Data which is frequently accessed.

      2. Cold tier - Data which is less frequently accessed and stored for at least 30 days.

      3. Archive tier - Data which is rarely accessed and stored for at least 180 days.

Different storage type

In Azure, there are different storage types

      1. Standard HDD - This disk is used for

            a. Web servers.

            b. Lightly used enterprise application.

            c. Dev/test machine.

      2. Standard SSD - This disk is used for

            a. Back up.

            b. Non-critical applications.

            c. Applications or data that requires infrequent access.

      3. Premium SSD - Used in production and performance sensitive workloads.

Premium SSD is the most expensive storage. Here is the table with different parameters.

      4. Ultra disk - Basically used for transaction heavy workload

Picture showing the offering of standard disk drives by Microsoft Azure

Click to Enlarge

Managed and Unmanaged Disk

A managed disk is managed by Azure. A managed disk ensures 99.9999% availability.

In an unmanaged disk, you are responsible to manage the storage account (storage account is used to store the disk).

Provisioned IOPS Vs Provisioned throughput

Provisioned IOPS is the number of input and output operations performed on the storage disk. More the number of input and output operations, faster the speed.

Provisioned throughput is the amount of data sent to the storage device.

Posted By -	Karan Gupta

Posted On -	Wednesday, September 30, 2020

Updated On -	Monday, April 19, 2021

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