Aung Oo reviews the latest advancements in Azure Ultra Disk, focusing on performance, flexibility, instant access snapshots, and customer success stories for mission-critical business applications.

The New Era of Azure Ultra Disk: Next-Gen Mission-Critical Block Storage

Azure Ultra Disk, introduced at Microsoft Ignite 2019, has become a foundational block storage solution for businesses with demanding operational needs. From high-frequency financial trading and electronic health records to gaming and AI/ML workloads, Ultra Disk stands out for its flexible configuration and high reliability.

Real-World Impact: BlackRock’s Success with Ultra Disk

Global asset manager BlackRock relies on Azure Ultra Disk, paired with M-series Virtual Machines, to support sensitive investment platforms. Ultra-low latency and reliable performance allow them to adapt rapidly in dynamic financial markets.

“Now that we’re on Azure, we have a springboard to unlock adoption of cloud-managed services to be able to engineer and operate at greater scale and adopt innovative technologies.”

— Randall Fradin, Head of Cloud Managed Services and Platform Engineering, BlackRock

Read the full BlackRock customer story

Key Innovations in Azure Ultra Disk

Enhanced Performance

  • 80% reduction in P99.9 and outlier latency and 30% improvement in average latency.
  • Ideal for I/O-intensive and latency-sensitive workloads—such as transaction logs for mission-critical applications.
  • Recommended as a better alternative to local SSD or Write Accelerator due to enhanced flexibility and data persistency.

Cost Efficiency and Flexibility

  • New provisioning model allows granular control of both capacity and IOPS, optimizing costs for a wide range of workloads.
  • GiB-based billing, higher maximum IOPS per GiB, and improved minimums.
  • Example: A financial app running a core database on Ultra Disk realized 22% cost savings using the new model.
Capacity Previous Cost Improved Flexibility Savings
12,500 GiB $1,594 $1,497 -6%
5,000 IOPS $661 $248 -62%
200 MB/s $70 $70 No change
Total $2,324 $1,815 -22%

High-Performance Workloads with Azure Boost

  • Memory Optimized Mbv3 VM (Standard_M416bs_v3): Up to 550,000 IOPS and 10GB/s throughput.
  • Azure Boost Ebdsv5 VM: Up to 400,000 IOPS and 10GB/s throughput.

Future Ignite announcements will introduce even more powerful VM configurations.

Instant Access Snapshot

  • Instant Access Snapshot for Ultra and Premium SSD v2 disks, now in public preview.
  • Snapshots are immediately usable for new disks—no lengthy background data copy phase.
  • Disks hydrate up to 10x faster, enabling rapid recovery and minimal downtime.

Additional Features for Business Continuity

  • Live Resize: Expand Ultra Disk storage live without downtime.
  • Dynamic Performance Adjustment: Tune disk performance to avoid overprovisioning.
  • Encryption at Host: End-to-end data encryption starting at the VM host.
  • Backup and Restore: Integrations with Azure Site Recovery, VM Backup, and Disk Backup.
  • Third-party Disaster Recovery Support: Compatibility with leading backup providers.
  • Shared Disk Capability: Migrate clusters using SCSI Persistent Reservations for cost-effective high availability.

Get Started

Experience the next generation of Azure Ultra Disk for your most mission-critical workloads.

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This post appeared first on “The Azure Blog”. Read the entire article here