Microsoft has introduced the overall availability (GA) of Customary SSD and Premium SSD assist for Azure Ephemeral OS Disks. Beforehand, solely Customary HDD might be chosen as the bottom disk sort; with this vital improve for stateless workloads, prospects will see improved efficiency and reliability.

As a little bit of background, Azure Ephemeral OS Disks are designed for stateless digital machines the place the OS disk is native to the VM and never continued to Azure Storage. They are often useful for speedy deployment and re-imaging however the ephemeral nature means knowledge is misplaced on re-imaging or VM deallocation.

It’s not simply quicker {hardware} that customers profit from after this announcement. Microsoft says that its Premium SSDs provide a 99.9% service-level settlement, in comparison with 95% for the Customary HDD, that means prospects get higher uptime and reliability.

Not solely that, however Microsoft says its Premium SSDs present 8-10 occasions greater IOPS than Customary HDD. Some particular advantages you’ll see when utilizing SSDs is quicker scaling and VM reliability, fast deployment of recent desktops, and quicker job begins on clear environments.

By way of value, the Customary HDD as base disk for Ephemeral OS disks stays freed from extra storage prices. Should you select the Customary SSD or Premium SSD as the bottom disk then you’ll face extra disk prices.

To get began with an SSD, it is advisable choose it as the bottom disk sort throughout digital machine creation through Azure CLI, PowerShell, or ARM templates. To create a VM with Ephemeral OS disk & Premium SSD base disk you should utilize the next AzCLI command:

az vm create --name MyVM --resource-group MyRG --image UbuntuLTS --ephemeral-os-disk true --storage-sku Premium_LRS

Or this PowerShell command:

Set-AzVMOSDisk -VM $VirtualMachine -DiffDiskSetting Native -DiffDiskPlacement ResourceDisk -CreateOption FromImage -Caching ReadOnly -StorageAccountType "Premium_LRS"

It’s also possible to select SSDs by way of the Azure Portal by choosing the Ephemeral OS disk choice and selecting Premium SSD in OS Disk Kind. To study extra take a look at the Ephemeral OS disks Study web page.

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