Delving into Azure VM storage

Each VM requires a disk that will be used by operating systems and applications run on it. In Azure, VMs have two types of disks:

• OS disk
• Data disk

Both types of disks have their own purpose, which we’ll discuss shortly. What’s more, each disk can be configured as either an HDD or an SSD disk, which will have a huge impact on the VM’s performance.

Azure VMs have also additional disks called temporary disks. They’re often labeled as D: disks and are not meant for storing data on them (that is, data stored there isn’t replicated to Azure Storage). Their main purpose is to act as storage for swap files or similar operations. They get erased when rebooting a machine, performing a failover, or any other operation that restarts an operating system. What’s more, some VMs in Azure don’t have temporary disks created for them. You don’t have control over that mechanism as it’s something...