What are Azure Managed Disks?
Azure Managed Disks are the recommended way to manage persistent storage for Azure Virtual Machines. They simplify storage management by handling all the storage account management for you. Managed Disks are standard disk containers that represent a virtual hard disk (VHD). These VHDs are stored as Azure Storage objects.
Managed Disks offer a highly available, durable, and performant storage solution designed to meet the demands of modern enterprise workloads running on Azure. They are designed to be highly available by default, with a 99.999% availability SLA for the underlying storage.
Key Benefits of Managed Disks
- Simplified Management: Azure manages the storage accounts, availability sets, and data redundancy for your disks.
- High Availability: Designed for high durability and availability with built-in redundancy.
- Performance Options: Choose from various performance tiers (Standard HDD, Standard SSD, Premium SSD, Ultra Disk) to match your workload needs.
- Scalability: Easily scale disk performance and capacity as your application requirements grow.
- Security: Support for encryption at rest and in transit, along with Azure Security Center integration.
- Cost-Effectiveness: Pay only for the storage you provision, with options to optimize costs.
Managed vs. Unmanaged Disks
Before Managed Disks, you had to manage the underlying storage accounts for your virtual machine disks (unmanaged disks). This involved creating, configuring, and managing storage accounts, which could be complex and error-prone. Managed Disks abstract away this complexity, providing a simpler and more robust solution.
Storage Account Management
Azure handles the provisioning, management, and scaling of storage accounts for Managed Disks automatically.
Availability Set Support
Managed Disks automatically spread across storage to align with Azure Availability Set requirements, ensuring higher availability.
Resource Governance
Disks are Azure resources that can be managed and governed using Azure Resource Manager (ARM) templates, Azure Policy, and RBAC.
Common Use Cases
Managed Disks are suitable for a wide range of scenarios, including:
- Boot and data drives for Azure Virtual Machines.
- High-performance database storage.
- Application workloads requiring reliable and scalable storage.
- Disaster recovery and business continuity solutions.
This document provides an overview of Azure Managed Disks. For more detailed information on specific types, operations, and performance considerations, please navigate through the sections in the sidebar.