The new era of Azure Ultra Disk: Experience the next generation of mission-critical block storage

Since its debut at Microsoft Ignite 2019, Azure Ultra Disk has been a driving force behind some of the most critical applications and workloads worldwide.

Since its introduction at Microsoft Ignite 2019, Azure Ultra Disk has enabled some of the world’s most high-stakes applications and tasks. Whether it’s for real-time financial trading, electronic health records, high-performance gaming, or AI/ML services, Ultra Disk has revolutionised cloud block storage. It brought forth the innovative concept of independently configuring capacity, IOPS, and throughput to achieve tailored performance at scale. Our journey to continuously innovate hasn’t stopped; we are dedicated to evolving in a way that meets the genuine needs of our customers, enhancing both performance and resilience for vital workloads.

These enhancements are not just theoretical; they’re making a tangible difference for customers on a global scale. Take BlackRock, for example, a leading asset management and technology company, which utilises Azure Ultra Disk alongside M-series Virtual Machines to support its mission-critical investment platform, Aladdin. For BlackRock, providing ultra-low latency and outstanding reliability is crucial for quickly adjusting to changing market conditions and managing portfolios with agility.

Now that we’re on Azure, we have a platform to unlock the potential of cloud-managed services, enabling us to operate at a larger scale and embrace innovative technologies.

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

You can read the complete customer story here.

Tales like that of BlackRock underscore the effectiveness of Ultra Disk, motivating us to keep advancing. Today, we are thrilled to announce a transformative update to Ultra Disk, focused on delivering enhanced speed, resilience, and cost-effectiveness for your most sensitive workloads. This significant refresh brings higher performance, increased flexibility for cost optimisation, and instant access snapshots to support business continuity. With these improvements, Ultra Disk empowers businesses to speed up operations, facilitate rapid data recovery, and scale with confidence, regardless of the demands.

What’s New with Ultra Disk?

Ultra Disk Delivers Reliable Performance with Enhanced Average P99.9 and Outlier Latency

In critical workloads, even minor interruptions can lead to significant issues. That’s why we’ve focused on minimizing tail latency at P99.9 and above. Our platform improvements have led to an 80% reduction in both P99.9 and outlier latency, along with a 30% enhancement in average latency. These advancements solidify Ultra Disk as the premier choice for highly I/O-intensive and latency-sensitive tasks, such as transaction logs for essential applications.

If you currently use local SSD or Write Accelerator for lower latencies, we suggest considering Ultra Disk as a viable alternative, offering better data persistence and greater flexibility for both capacity and performance.

Optimise Application Costs Without Compromising Performance

We aim to help you maximize both efficiency and performance in your workload. Ultra Disk’s latest provisioning model now offers improved control over capacity and performance, making cost management easier. For smaller disks, savings can reach up to 50%, while larger disks can offer up to 25% in savings. These updated features are now available for both new and existing Ultra Disks:

For instance, a financial application that utilizes Ultra Disk for its core database, which provides market trend insights, only requires moderate IOPS and throughput at low latency but manages a large volume of data (no more than 12,500 GiB, 5000 IOPS and 200 MB/s). With more customizable capacity and performance control, this deployment now enjoys a 22% reduction in Ultra Disk expenditure, as shown below with pricing from the East US region.

Unlock High-Performance Workloads with Azure Boost and Ultra Disk

Ultra Disk, in conjunction with Azure Boost, now facilitates a new category of high-performance workloads:

These advancements empower customers to confidently run high-demand applications such as large SQL databases, electronic health records, and essential enterprise platforms. Ultra Disk is now better equipped to meet stringent performance requirements, leveraging the latest technologies in Virtual Machines.

Instant Access Snapshot: Restore and Operate Your Business Applications Instantly

We’re excited to introduce a groundbreaking feature: the Instant Access Snapshot for Ultra and Premium SSD v2 disks, now in public preview. With Instant Access, you can immediately use snapshots post-creation to create new disks, eliminating the traditionally long wait for background data copying. Disks created from these Instant Access Snapshots can hydrate up to 10 times faster, experiencing minimal impact on read latency during the process. This innovative feature is a game-changer in the public cloud landscape, enabling swift recovery and scalable replication for your organisation. Say goodbye to lengthy restoration times and costly downtimes! Instant Access Snapshot allows you to resume operations in mere moments, not hours.

Building on Security, Flexibility, and Efficiency for Ultra Disk

Let’s explore some additional features recently released, all designed to enhance your experience with high-performance workloads on Ultra Disk.

• Achieve cost-efficient operation by expanding your Ultra Disk capacity live with live resize and dynamically adjusting Ultra Disk performance to avoid over-provisioning.
• Ensure your business applications run securely with encryption at host on Ultra Disk, which encrypts data starting from the VM host and continues to the Ultra Disk storage.
• Azure Site Recovery – Effortlessly recover your VM applications using Ultra Disk in another Azure region if your primary region goes down.
• Azure VM Backup – Back up your VM applications that incorporate Ultra Disk with ease and security.
• Azure Disk Backup – Securely back up specific Ultra Disks that are critical for your operations, helping to reduce backup costs and allowing for more tailored backup solutions.
• Third-party backup and disaster recovery support: We recognise that you may use preferred third-party services for your backup and disaster recovery needs. Check out the third-party services here that now support Ultra Disk.
• Migrate your clustered application to Azure seamlessly, utilising SCSI Persistent Reservations to Ultra Disk with shared disk capability. This capability simplifies migration and provides further cost optimisation for your mission-critical clustered applications.

Getting Started: Unlock New Possibilities for Your Business

Join us on this exciting journey to redefine what’s possible for your mission-critical business applications. With Azure Ultra Disk, you’ll experience the future of high-performance storage today, empowering your organisation to act faster, recover instantly, and scale with ease.