Azure Managed Disks
Azure Managed Disks are the recommended way to manage storage for Azure Virtual Machines. They are block-level storage volumes that you can create, use, and manage independently of a virtual machine. Managed Disks are highly available and durable storage options for your Azure VMs.
Key Features and Benefits
- High Availability and Durability: Managed Disks offer built-in redundancy to protect your data from hardware failures.
- Simplified Management: Azure handles the underlying storage infrastructure, so you don't need to worry about managing storage accounts or virtual disks.
- Scalability: Easily scale your storage capacity and performance as your application needs grow.
- Performance Tiers: Choose from various performance tiers (Standard HDD, Standard SSD, Premium SSD, Ultra Disk) to match your workload requirements and budget.
- Security: Data is encrypted at rest by default. You can also enable encryption with customer-managed keys for enhanced control.
- Cost-Effectiveness: Pay only for the storage you provision, and benefit from Azure's optimized storage solutions.
Disk Types
Managed Disks come in several types, each offering different performance characteristics and cost points:
- Standard HDD: Cost-effective, suitable for workloads like development/test, non-critical applications, and backup/archival.
- Standard SSD: A balance between cost and performance, ideal for web servers, lightly used enterprise applications, and development/test environments.
- Premium SSD: High performance, low latency storage, suitable for production and performance-sensitive workloads, including SQL and SAP databases.
- Ultra Disk: The highest performing disk offering, designed for I/O intensive workloads such as SAP HANA, top-tier databases, and mission-critical applications.
Common Operations
You can perform various operations on Managed Disks using the Azure portal, Azure CLI, PowerShell, or REST API.
Creating a Disk
To create a Managed Disk, you typically specify the resource group, disk name, size, and performance tier.
az disk create --resource-group MyResourceGroup --name MyDisk --size-gb 100 --sku Premium_LRS
Attaching a Disk to a VM
Managed Disks can be attached to Azure Virtual Machines as data disks or operating system disks.
az vm disk attach --resource-group MyResourceGroup --vm-name MyVM --name MyDisk --new
Managing Disk Snapshots
Snapshots are point-in-time copies of a disk that can be used for backup and disaster recovery.
az snapshot create --resource-group MyResourceGroup --name MySnapshot --source MyDisk