In our modern world, IOPS, throughput and latency are key indicators when it comes to performance requirements of computers / Virtual Machines. I came across some really good best practices articles about how to identify and quantify your performance requirements for standard VM scenarios but also key scenarios like SQL Server when using Premium Storage.

About Premium Storage

Azure Premium Storage delivers high-performance, low-latency disk support for virtual machines running I/O-intensive workloads. Virtual machine (VM) disks that use Premium Storage store data on solid state drives (SSDs). You can migrate your application's VM disks to Azure Premium Storage to take advantage of the speed and performance of these disks.

• Premium Storage: High-Performance Storage for Azure Virtual Machine Workloads

Plan & Gather Application Performance Indicators

This article provides guidelines for building high performance applications using Azure Premium Storage. You can use the instructions provided in this document combined with performance best practices applicable to technologies used by your application. To illustrate the guidelines, we have used SQL Server running on Premium Storage as an example throughout this document.

While we address performance scenarios for the Storage layer in this article, you will need to optimize the application layer. For example, if you are hosting a SharePoint Farm on Azure Premium Storage, you can use the SQL Server examples from this article to optimize the database server. Additionally, optimize the SharePoint Farm’s Web server and Application server to get the most performance.

• Azure Premium Storage: Design for High Performance

Azure Premium Storage with SQL Server

This article provides planning and guidance for migrating a Virtual Machine running SQL Server to use Premium Storage. This includes Azure infrastructure (networking, storage) and guest Windows VM steps.

Azure has two different deployment models for creating and working with resources: Resource Manager and classic. This article covers using the classic deployment model. Microsoft recommends that most new deployments use the Resource Manager model.

Even if the article covers the classic deployment model, the principle underneath remain the sames whenever you use the classic or newer Resource Providers.

• Use Azure Premium Storage with SQL Server on Virtual Machines

Have a good read and have fun with Premium Storage!