disk-tiers

name	disk-tiers
description	Compare Standard HDD, Standard SSD, Premium SSD v1/v2, and Ultra Disk

Disk Tiers

When to use this skill

• Choosing a disk for a new VM
• Right-sizing existing disks for cost/perf

Key concepts

• Standard HDD — cheapest, backup/dev/archive.
• Standard SSD — low-cost SSD, web/dev/test, light prod.
• Premium SSD v1 — production workloads, IOPS scale with size, broad SKU support.
• Premium SSD v2 — independent IOPS/throughput/size knobs, cheaper per IOPS than v1 for medium tiers, AZ-only.
• Ultra Disk — sub-ms latency, up to 400K IOPS / 10 GiB/s, tunable live, AZ-only, limited SKU support.

Azure CLI examples

az vm create ... --storage-sku Premium_LRS
az disk create -g rg -n data1 --size-gb 1024 --sku PremiumV2_LRS --zone 1 \
  --disk-iops-read-write 8000 --disk-mbps-read-write 200

Common pitfalls

• Picking Ultra when Premium v2 would do — Ultra costs more and has narrower SKU support.
• Premium v2/Ultra outside an AZ deployment — provisioning will fail.

References

• Microsoft Learn: search for "Disk Tiers Azure VM" on https://learn.microsoft.com

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Validation-first: verify every Azure fact against the Microsoft Learn MCP server (cite the Learn URL); Learn overrides built-in knowledge. If no Learn MCP server is configured, flag the answer ⚠️ unverified and mark specs as indicative. Analysis only — verify against Microsoft documentation before applying.