DailyAzureUpdatesGenerator

August 16, 2025 - Azure Updates Summary Report (Details Mode)

Generated on: August 16, 2025 Target period: Within the last 24 hours Processing mode: Details Mode Number of updates: 1 items

Update List

1. Generally Available: Azure Files provisioned v2 billing model for SSD (premium)

Published: August 15, 2025 16:30:50 UTC Link: Generally Available: Azure Files provisioned v2 billing model for SSD (premium)

Update ID: 500695 Data source: Azure Updates API

Categories: Launched, Storage, Azure Files, Features, Pricing & Offerings

Summary:

What was updated
Azure Files now supports the provisioned v2 billing model on the SSD (premium) media tier.
Key changes or new features
The provisioned v2 model allows independent provisioning of storage capacity, IOPS, and throughput for premium SSD file shares. This enables precise tuning of performance and storage resources to match workload requirements, rather than being constrained by fixed performance tiers. Developers and IT professionals can now create file shares with customized performance profiles, optimizing cost and efficiency.
Target audience affected
Developers and IT professionals managing Azure Files premium SSD shares who require granular control over storage performance and capacity.
Important notes if any
This update provides greater flexibility and cost management for high-performance file shares. Users should evaluate their workload needs to leverage independent scaling of IOPS and throughput alongside storage size. Existing shares may need to be recreated or migrated to take advantage of the provisioned v2 model.

For more details, visit: https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=500695

Details:

The recent general availability of the Azure Files provisioned v2 billing model for SSD (premium) media tier introduces a significant enhancement in how storage, IOPS, and throughput are provisioned and billed independently, enabling more granular control over performance and cost optimization for enterprise file shares.

Background and Purpose:
Previously, Azure Files premium SSD shares were billed based on provisioned capacity with fixed performance characteristics tied to the size of the share, limiting flexibility in matching performance needs to workload demands. The provisioned v2 billing model addresses this by decoupling storage capacity from performance metrics, allowing IT professionals to tailor IOPS and throughput independently from storage size. This update aligns Azure Files with modern cloud storage paradigms emphasizing performance elasticity and cost efficiency.

Specific Features and Detailed Changes:

Independent Provisioning: Users can now specify exact amounts of storage capacity (in GiB), IOPS, and throughput (in MiB/s) separately when creating or resizing file shares on the premium SSD tier.
Flexible Performance Scaling: This model supports scaling performance up or down without necessarily increasing storage size, enabling cost savings when high performance is needed temporarily or for specific workloads.
Granular Billing: Billing is based on the provisioned quantities of storage, IOPS, and throughput, rather than being implicitly tied to storage size alone.
API and Portal Support: The Azure portal, CLI, PowerShell, and REST APIs have been updated to support specifying these parameters during share creation or modification.

Technical Mechanisms and Implementation Methods:
Under the hood, provisioned v2 leverages Azure’s underlying storage infrastructure to allocate dedicated SSD-backed resources for IOPS and throughput independently from capacity. This is achieved by abstracting the performance layer from the storage layer, allowing the Azure Files service to enforce QoS policies that guarantee the provisioned performance levels. When provisioning or resizing a share, users specify parameters such as Provisioned IOPS and Provisioned Throughput alongside storage size. The Azure Files control plane then orchestrates resource allocation on the premium SSD media tier accordingly. This model also supports dynamic resizing, enabling performance adjustments without downtime.

Use Cases and Application Scenarios:

High-Performance Workloads: Applications requiring consistent high IOPS or throughput, such as databases, analytics, and media processing, benefit from tailored provisioning.
Cost Optimization: Workloads with variable performance needs can scale performance up during peak times and down during off-peak, avoiding over-provisioning costs.
Dev/Test Environments: Developers can provision minimal storage but high throughput for testing performance-sensitive applications without incurring high storage costs.
File Shares with Mixed Workloads: Enterprises running mixed workloads on the same share can provision balanced performance to meet diverse requirements.

Important Considerations and Limitations:

Minimum and Maximum Limits: There are defined minimum and maximum values for provisioned IOPS and throughput per share, which must be adhered to; exceeding these limits will result in errors.
Quota and Subscription Limits: Provisioned v2 shares count against subscription quotas for premium file shares and may require quota increases for large-scale deployments.
Compatibility: Existing shares created under the legacy billing model can be migrated to provisioned v2, but this may require downtime or data migration depending on the scenario.
Monitoring and Alerts: Users should implement monitoring using Azure Monitor to track provisioned vs. consumed IOPS and throughput to optimize provisioning and avoid throttling.

Integration with Related Azure Services:

Azure Monitor: Integration enables detailed performance metrics and alerting on provisioned parameters.
Azure Backup: Supports backup of provisioned v2 shares, ensuring data protection with consistent performance.
Azure File Sync: Can be used in conjunction with provisioned v2 shares to cache and tier data efficiently across on-premises and cloud environments.
Azure Active Directory and RBAC: Access

This report was automatically generated - 2025-08-16 03:01:18 UTC

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