Which drive should be uses to persist data in azure virtual machine? - azure

In my azure virtual machine i selected windows server 2008 r2 image from quick created. When I log into the machine, i see there are two drive. On which drive i should ftp my application because I am not sure which drive will persist if machine is moved.
Also how much data i can persist on each different type of VM, is there a limit depend on my vm size?

In Windows Azure Virtual Machine for Windows you can find drive C and D.
Drive C is the boot OS disk and the size is actually the size of your VHD you have either uploaded or configured from the Gallery. This disk is the persisted disk so anything you will store on drive C will be persisted. In the preview the Windows Server R2 VHD from Gallery id default 30 GB in size that's why you may see 30 GB size in drive C: however you can create upto 128 GB VHD and deploy by your own with medium and above Virtual Machine instance.
The storage space on drive D: is the temporary storage as indicated in the above table, where a Medium is expected to be 100 GB. This space is NOT peristed in Windows Azure storage and will be destroyed if the Virtual Machine needs to be migrated due to bad hardware.
About your question on how much data can be persisted on Windows Azure Virtual machine, the data size which can persist on Windows Azure Virtual Machine is documented here.
Extra Small - 20 GB
Small - 20 GB
Medium - 100 GB
Large - 200 GB
Extra Large - 400 GB

Each Azure virtual machine has, by default, two drives. The default c: drive is a vhd in blob storage connaected as storage to your virtual machine and is the persistant drive. See the technical diagram and description of creating virtual machines here: http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/manage/linux/other-resources/command-line-tools/
Any drives you connect to the virtual machine will be, ultimately, vhd's in blob storage.

Yes, the limit does depend on your VM size.
Each data disk that you attach to an Azure Virtual Machine has a maximum capacity of 1 TB (current max size for a page blob which backs this data disk). So with an extra large VM you can have 16 TB of persistant geo-replicated storage (if you enable this in your storage account).
VM Size Data Disk Limit
Extra Small 1
Small 2
Medium 4
Large 8
Extra Large 16
http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/manage/windows/how-to-guides/attach-a-disk/

Related

Azure Vs AWS VM storage costs

I am trying to price out moving our company to azure or aws. I recently created a Azure VM at $45 a month.
2 Core +
4GB Ram +
8GB Temporary storage
I choose a HDD unmanaged disk when creating the VM. When I remote into the VM i see a 8GB D drive but I also see a 120GB C drive. What is the cost of the C drive?
Also how does this compare AWS, do they charge extra for this 120gb?
D drive is temporary and a free one (its not persistent). Its size depends on the VM SKU.
C drive is persistent and costs money. You can use Azure calculator to find out the cost (https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/calculator/)

Resizing Disk on Azure Virtual Machine with Storage Pool

I own a virtual machine (classic) on Azure that uses 4 data disks, each making 50 GB. These disks are grouped together in a storage pool.
Is it possible to increase the size (up to 100 GB for example) of disks despite the storage pool ?
I have already made a large increase on a single disk successfully (with powershell) but never on a storage pool.
I want to be sure that there is no danger to the data currently on the disks.
Thanks for your help.
Based on my knowledge, it is not possible to increase physical disk to expand storage pool.
As a workaround, maybe you can resize your Azure VM to a high size, then extend the pool by adding more physical disks.
You can use PowerShell to add physical disk Add-PhysicalDisk.
$toadd = Get-PhysicalDisk -FriendlyName "Msft Virtual Disk"
Add-PhysicalDisk -StoragePoolFriendlyName poolname -PhysicalDisks $toadd

When creating virtual machine in Azure with template Sql Server 2014 SP1 Web on Windows Server 2012 R2, a 1TB premium disk is always attached

When creating the VM I'm asked about Storage configuration. When I select IOPS=0 (the minimum is otherwise 5000), Throughput=0 and Storage size=0, the info text is
0 data disks will be added to the virtual machine. This value was computed based on the value of IOPS, throughput, and storage size.
When the VM is created and I go to the Storage account, select Blobs and Container named vhds I see two disks, one 127GB and one 1TB disk.
Since the 1TB premium disks costs >100€/month I don't want that.
I tried removing the disk from a created machine but when I tried to add a new I got the error that "LUN :0 is already in use".
Preferably I would like to create machine correctly from the start. How can I do that?
This is correct. The current SQL Server IaaS experience on Azure Portal would creates one disk of 1TB even if specify 0 IOPS. We will add a fix to ensure the user cannot specify IOPS below 1 TB disk. If you need SQLVM without disks or any other configurations, you may use Azure PowerShell to create the VM.

Azure VHD blobs larger than 1TB

Azure storage supports blobs up to 1 TB in size, which accommodates a VHD with a maximum virtual size of 999 GB.
I want to create a VHD for your database system that uses several blobs to accommodate databases larger than 1 TB, is this possible? And if so, then how can I configure a single VHD to use different blobs?
Win2012? From azure portal, create and attach N disks (1 TB each?) to you virtual machine. Then, from win2012 create a StoregePool and create a virtual disk on it. The resulting size is the sum of disks size if you choose the "Simple" layout (or less if you choose Mirror or Parity). Details: http://blogs.technet.com/b/yungchou/archive/2012/08/31/windows-server-2012-storage-virtualization-explained.aspx
From this blog post: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsazure/archive/2013/06/04/the-top-10-things-to-know-when-running-sql-server-workloads-on-windows-azure-virtual-machines.aspx
A data disk can be up to 1 TB in size, and you can have a maximum of
16 drives on an A4 or larger VM. If your database is larger than 1 TB,
you can use SQL Server file groups to spread your database across
multiple data disks. Alternatively, you can combine multiple data
disks into a single large volume using Storage Spaces in Windows
Server 2012. Storage Spaces are better than legacy OS striping
technologies because they work well with the append-only nature of
Windows Azure Storage.

10 Terabytes of storage - Microsoft Azure Linux VM

I want to create a linux VM that can accomodate up to 10 terabytes of data. Not sure how to accomplish that on Microsoft Azure or if it is even possible. Any insight would be appreciated.
You create the storage separately from the VM - they have a data servuce known as BLOB service in Azure
Here is a link http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/storage-dotnet-how-to-use-blobs/
supporting many terrabytes is not a problem
You create one Linux VM from image and then attach (via Azure portal, like here) 10 disks of 1TB each. Today 1TB is the max size of a disk in Azure. As for the VM, you will need to have an Extra Large VM in order to accept this number of disks (up to 16 disks for an XL).

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