Abstract
Azure Disks provide block storage for Azure Virtual Machines and are a core pillar of the Azure IaaS platform. In this talk, we will provide an overview of Direct Drive - Azure's next-generation block storage architecture. Direct Drive forms the foundation for a new family of Azure disk offerings, starting with Ultra Disk (Azure's highest performance disks). We will describe the challenges of providing durable, highly-available, high-performance disks at cloud scale as well as the software and hardware innovations that allow us to overcome these challenges.
- Understand the new Azure block storage architecture – Direct Drive and its design principles
- Learn about the Ultra Disk capabilities powered by Direct Drive
- Recognize the difference of Direct Drive implementation versus industry standard practices and our rationales