Azure Managed Disks 2 – Microsoft AZ-900 Exam

Use Cases for Azure Managed Disks

Enterprise Applications: Managed Disks are ideal for enterprise applications that require high-performance and highly available disk storage, such as SAP HANA, SQL Server, and Oracle databases.

Lift-and-Shift Scenarios: For companies migrating on-premises applications to the cloud, Managed Disks provide the durable and available storage required for most enterprise applications.

DevOps and Automation: Managed Disks support Azure Resource Manager templates, enabling automation and integration into the DevOps pipelines.

Big Data and Analytics: The performance of Premium and Ultra Disks makes them well-suited for big data and real-time analytics applications.

Gaming: For gaming applications where latency can impact the user experience, the high performance of Managed Disks is beneficial.

Best Practices for Azure Managed Disks

Right-Size Performance Needs: It’s important to assess and choose the right disk type and size for your workload to avoid over-provisioning and incurring unnecessary costs.

Leverage Snapshots for Backups: Regularly scheduled snapshots can help in recovering from unintended data changes and corruptions.

Encrypt Sensitive Data: Using Azure Disk Encryption can help secure your data and meet compliance requirements.

Use Managed Disk Snapshots Before Size Changes: Before resizing disks or performing critical operations, snapshots can provide a restore point.

Performance Monitoring: Regularly monitor performance metrics and adjust disk size or type as needed to optimize costs and performance.

Challenges and Considerations with Azure Managed Disks

Cost Management: Cost can quickly become a factor, especially with higher performance disks. Monitoring and right-sizing are essential to manage costs effectively.

Limits and Quotas: There are limits on the number of Managed Disks you can provision per subscription, and you should be aware of these limits as you scale.

Regional Availability: Not all disk types are available in all regions, which can be a consideration for deployment planning.

Conclusion

Azure Managed Disks offer a robust, secure, and scalable block storage solution for Azure VMs. It simplifies the management of persistent storage on the cloud, making it easier for organizations to scale their applications without managing the underlying storage infrastructure. By providing different performance tiers, encryption, and integration with Azure’s security and management features, Managed Disks is a compelling offering for any workload requiring persistent storage on Azure.

Selecting the appropriate disk type based on the workload’s performance and capacity requirements is crucial for cost optimization. As organizations grow their presence on the cloud, Managed Disks is a pivotal component, providing the reliability and performance needed for a wide range of applications. The managed nature of the service simplifies operations, freeing up time and resources to focus on application optimization and innovation.

For enterprises, developers, and IT professionals leveraging Azure’s cloud platform, understanding and utilizing Managed Disks is key to building and maintaining scalable, performant, and cost-effective cloud solutions.

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