Advanced Block Storage Solution using Azure Premium SSD v2

Objective

• Microsoft has released the first beta version of Premium SSD v2, the follow-up to Microsoft Azure Premium SSD Disk Storage.
• Let’s see what Premium SSD v2 is and its comparison with Premium SSD and its pricing.

Introduction

Microsoft has released the first beta version of Premium SSD v2, the follow-up to Microsoft Azure Premium SSD Disk Storage. The company claims that this new disc offering offers the most advanced block storage solution for a variety of input/output (IO)-intensive enterprise production workloads that demand sub-millisecond disc latencies as well as high input/output operations per second (IOPS) and throughput—all at a reasonable price.

What is Azure Premium SSD v2?

Azure Premium SSD v2 is made for IO-intensive enterprise workloads that need reliable sub-millisecond disc latencies and high throughput and IOPS at a reasonable price. It is simpler for more scenarios to be cost-effective while fulfilling performance requirements since the performance (capacity, throughput, and IOPS) of Premium SSD v2 discs may be separately configured at any moment. SQL Server, Oracle, MariaDB, SAP, Cassandra, Mongo DB, big data/analytics, and gaming are just a few of the workloads that Premium SSD v2 is suitable for on virtual machines or stateful containers.

Up to 64TiBs of storage space, 80,000 IOPS, and 1,200 MBPS performance can now be provisioned on a single drive using Premium SSD v2. Additionally, you may individually provide granular disc sizes, IOPS, and throughput with Premium SSD v2, giving you additional flexibility in managing performance and costs.

With the release of Premium SSD v2, our Azure Disk Storage portfolio now has one of the most extensive collections of disc storage options to meet the needs of workloads ranging from Tier-1 IOPS-intensive workloads, like SAP HANA, to general-purpose workloads, like RDMS and NoSQL databases, and cost-sensitive Dev/Test workloads.

Benefits of Premium SSD v2

Balancing performance and cost is a primary concern for clients as they move their production workloads to the cloud or roll out new cloud-native apps. For instance, a gaming application may demand extremely high IOPS during peak hours, or transaction-intensive database workloads may require high IOPS on a modest disc space.

You can provision storage capacity in increments of 1 GiB up to 64 TiB using Premium SSD v2. A baseline performance of 3,000 IOPS and 125 MB/sec is offered by all Premium SSD v2 discs. If your disc requires more performance, you can provision the needed IOPS and throughput up to the maximum limitations stated at a minimal cost.

The main advantages are as follows:

• Size of the granular disc in 1 GiB
• IOPS, throughput, and GiB provisioning that is independent.
• consistent latency of under a millisecond.
• easier maintenance with no downtime while scaling performance up and down.
• At general availability, Premium SSD v2 will offer our sector-leading data durability and high availability, just like all other Azure Disk Storage products.

Comparison of Premium SSD and Premium SSD v2

Limitations of Premium SSD v2

• Premium SSD v2 discs are ineligible for usage as OS discs.
• At this time, only zonal VMs may be connected to Premium SSD v2
• VMs in virtual machine scale sets cannot currently have Premium SSD v2 drives attached to them.
• Currently, creating a Premium SSD v2 from a snapshot of another disc type is not possible. Snapshots are also not supported.
• VMs with encryption at host enabled cannot currently be joined to Premium SSD v2 discs.
• Premium SSD v2 discs cannot currently be mounted to VMs in Availability Sets.
• For VMs with Premium SSD v2 discs, Azure Disk Encryption is not supported.
• VMs with Premium SSD v2 discs are not supported by Azure Backup and Azure Site Recovery.

Pricing of Azure Premium SSD v2

According to the supplied capacity, IOPS, and MBPS, premium SSD v2 drives are invoiced hourly. Let us use a disc with a 200 GiB capacity, 6000 IOPS, and 175 MB/sec throughput as an example

The provisioned capacity is charged per GiB for the discs. Hence, you will be charged for 200 GiB of the provisioned capacity.

Any additional IOPS provisioned over the baseline free limit of 3,000 IOPS for the discs will be invoiced. In this case, since you provisioned 6000 IOPS, you will be billed for the additional 3,000 IOPS.

Any throughput above the basic free throughput of 125 MB/s for the discs is invoiced. In this case, since you provisioned 175 MB/sec throughput, you will be billed for the additional 50 MB/s throughput.

Conclusion

In both the East US and West Europe Azure regions, Premium SSD v2 is only accessible by request. In addition, clients can construct and administer Premium SSD v2 through the Azure interface, PowerShell, and CLI SDKs once they have enrolled. For further information, consult the Premium SSD v2 documentation from Microsoft.

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