Azure Managed Disks provide highly available and durable storage for Azure Virtual Machines. They are block-level storage volumes that you can manage and use like a physical disk, but they are hosted on Azure. This document provides a foundational understanding of Azure Managed Disks.
What are Azure Managed Disks?
Traditionally, virtual machine storage involved managing storage accounts, virtual disks (VHDs), and the underlying infrastructure. Azure Managed Disks abstract away the complexity of managing storage accounts. When you create a virtual machine with Managed Disks, Azure automatically handles the storage account creation, management, and replication for your disks. This simplifies the deployment and management of VMs, allowing you to focus on your applications.
Key Concepts
- Managed Disks: These are the fundamental storage units for your Azure VMs. They are designed for high availability and durability.
- Disk Types: Azure offers different types of managed disks, each with varying performance characteristics and cost points.
- Resource Manager: Managed Disks are Azure resources and are managed using Azure Resource Manager (ARM).
Benefits of Using Managed Disks
Simplified Management
Eliminates the need to manage storage accounts for individual VM disks. Azure handles the underlying infrastructure, replication, and availability.
High Availability
Managed Disks are designed for 99.999% availability, providing robust storage for your mission-critical applications. Data is replicated within an Azure region for resilience.
Scalability
Easily scale your disk capacity and performance up or down as your needs change. You can resize disks without downtime for most operations.
Security
Managed Disks support encryption at rest, ensuring your data is protected. You can also enable Azure Disk Encryption for OS and data volumes.
Types of Managed Disks
Azure Managed Disks come in several types, categorized by performance and intended use:
Ultra Disks
The highest performing disk option, offering configurable IOPS and throughput. Ideal for I/O-intensive workloads like SAP HANA, top-tier SQL/Oracle databases, and critical transaction processing.
Premium SSDs
High-performance, low-latency SSDs suitable for production and development/test environments that require consistent performance. Great for most business-critical applications.
Standard SSDs
A cost-effective SSD option offering consistent performance for workloads that need lower latency than standard HDDs but don't require the premium tier. Good for web servers, lightly used applications, and dev/test.
Standard HDDs
The most affordable disk option, best suited for data that is accessed infrequently or for backup/restore scenarios. Offers the lowest cost but the highest latency.
Common Use Cases
- Operating System Disks for Azure Virtual Machines
- Data Disks for storing application data
- Databases requiring high IOPS and low latency
- Large-scale data analytics workloads
- Disaster recovery solutions
Next Steps
To learn more about creating and managing Azure Managed Disks, refer to the following resources: