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What's new for Azure Disk Storage

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Azure Disk Storage regularly receives updates for new features and enhancements. This article provides information about what's new in Azure Disk Storage.

Update summary

What's new in 2024

Quarter 1 (January, February, March)

Generally available: Azure VM Backup Support for Ultra Disks and Premium SSD v2

Azure Backup enabled support on Azure VMs using Ultra Disks and Premium SSD v2 that offers high throughput, high IOPS, and low latency. Azure VM Backup support allows you to ensure business continuity for your virtual machines and to recover from any disasters or ransomware attacks. Enabling backup on VMs using Ultra Disks and Premium SSD v2 is available in all regions where creation of Ultra disks and Premium SSD v2 are supported. To learn more, refer to the documentation and enable backup on your Azure VMs.

Generally available: Trusted launch support for Ultra Disks and Premium SSD v2

Trusted launch VMs added support for Ultra Disks and Premium SSD v2, allowing you to combine the foundational compute security of Trusted Launch with the high throughput, high IOPS, and low latency of Ultra Disks and Premium SSD v2. For more information, see Trusted launch for Azure virtual machines or the Azure Update.

Expanded regional availability for Ultra Disks

Ultra Disks were made available in the UK West and Poland Central regions.

Expanded regional availability for zone-redundant storage disks

Zone-redundant storage (ZRS) disks were made available in West US 3 and Germany Central regions.

What's new in 2023

Quarter 4 (October, November, December)

Encryption at host GA for Premium SSD v2 and Ultra Disks

Encryption at host was previously only available for Standard HDDs, Standard SSDs, and Premium SSDs. Encryption at host is now also available as a GA offering for Premium SSD v2 and Ultra Disks. For more information on encryption at host, see Encryption at host - End-to-end encryption for your VM data.

There are some additional restrictions for Premium SSD v2 and Ultra Disks that enable encryption at host. For more information, see Restrictions.

New latency metrics (preview)

Metrics dedicated to monitoring latency are now available as a preview feature. To learn more, see either the metrics article or the Azure Update.

Expanded regional availability for Premium SSD v2

Premium SSD v2 disks were made available in Poland Central, China North 3, and US Gov Virginia. For more information, see the Azure Update.

Expanded regional availability for ZRS disks

ZRS disks were made available in the Norway East and UAE North regions. For more information, see the Azure Update.

Quarter 3 (July, August, September)

Expanded regional availability for ZRS disks

In quarter 3, ZRS disks were made available in the China North 3, East Asia, India Central, Switzerland North, South Africa North, and Sweden Central regions.

Expanded regional availability for Premium SSD v2

In Quarter 3, Premium SSD v2 were made available in the Australia East, Brazil South, Canada Central, Central India, Central US, East Asia, France Central, Japan East, Korea Central, Norway East, South Africa North, Sweden Central, Switzerland North, and UAE North regions.

General Availability - Incremental Snapshots for Premium SSD v2 and Ultra Disks

Incremental snapshots for Premium SSD v2 and Ultra Disks were made available as a general availability (GA) feature. For more information, see either the documentation or the Azure Update.

Quarter 2 (April, May, June)

Expanded regional availability for Premium SSD v2

In quarter 2, Premium SSD v2 disks were made available in the Southeast Asia, UK South, South Central US, and West US 3 regions.

Expanded regional availability for ZRS disks

In quarter 2, ZRS disks were made available in the Australia East, Brazil South, Japan East, Korea Central, Qatar Central, UK South, East US, East US 2, South Central US, and Southeast Asia regions.

Azure Backup support (preview) for Premium SSD v2

Azure Backup added preview support for Azure virtual machines using Premium SSD v2 disks in the East US and West Europe regions. For more information, see the Azure Update.

Quarter 1 (January, February, March)

Expanded regional availability for Premium SSD v2

In quarter 1, Premium SSD v2 disks were made available in the East US 2, North Europe, and West US 2 regions.

Preview - Performance plus

Azure Disk Storage added a new preview feature, performance plus. Performance plus enhances the IOPS and throughput performance for Premium SSDs, Standard SSDs, and Standard HDDs that are 513 GiB and larger. For details, see Increase IOPS and throughput limits for Azure Premium SSDs and Standard SSD/HDDs

Expanded regional availability for Ultra Disks

In quarter 1, Ultra Disks were made available in the Brazil Southeast, China North 3, Korea South, South Africa North, Switzerland North, and UAE North regions.

More transactions at no extra cost - Standard SSDs

In quarter 1, we added an hourly limit to the number of transactions that can occur a billable cost. Any transactions beyond that limit don't occur a cost. For more information, see the blog post or Standard SSD transactions.

GA: Create disks from snapshots encrypted with customer-managed keys across subscriptions

In quarter 1, support for creating disks from snapshots or other disks encrypted with customer-managed keys in different subscriptions while within the same tenant was added. For more information, see either the Azure Update or the documentation.

GA: Entra ID support for managed disks

In quarter 1, support for using Entra ID to secure uploads and downloads of managed disks was added. For details, see Secure downloads with Microsoft Entra ID or Secure uploads with Microsoft Entra ID.

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