Performance tiers for managed disks
Applies to: ✔️ Linux VMs ✔️ Windows VMs ✔️ Flexible scale sets ✔️ Uniform scale sets
Note
This article focuses on how to change performance tiers. To learn how to change the performance of disks that don't use performance tiers, like Ultra Disks or Premium SSD v2, see either Adjust the performance of an ultra disk or Adjust disk performance of a Premium SSD v2
The performance of Premium solid-state drives (SSD) is set when you create your disk, in the form of their performance tier. When you set the provisioned size of your disk, a performance tier is automatically selected. The performance tier determines the IOPS and throughput your managed disk has. For Premium SSD disks only, the performance tier can be changed at deployment or afterwards, without changing the size of the disk, and without downtime.
Changing the performance tier allows you to prepare for and meet higher demand without using your disk's bursting capability. It can be more cost-effective to change your performance tier rather than rely on bursting, depending on how long the additional performance is necessary. This is ideal for events that temporarily require a consistently higher level of performance, like holiday shopping, performance testing, or running a training environment. To handle these events, you can switch a disk to a higher performance tier without downtime, for as long as you need the additional performance. You can then return to the original tier without downtime when the additional performance is no longer necessary.
To learn more about how the performance of a disk works with the performance of a virtual machine, see Virtual machine and disk performance.
Restrictions
- This feature is currently supported only for premium SSD managed disks.
- Performance tiers of shared disks can't be changed while attached to running VMs.
- To change the performance tier of a shared disk, stop all the VMs it's attached to.
- The P60, P70, and P80 performance tiers can only be used by disks that are larger than 4,096 GiB.
- A disk's performance tier can be downgraded only once every 12 hours.
- The system does not return Performance Tier for disks created before June 2020. You can take advantage of Performance Tier for an older disk by updating it with the baseline Tier.
How it works
When you first deploy or provision a disk, the baseline performance tier for that disk is set based on the provisioned disk size. You can use a performance tier higher than the original baseline to meet higher demand. When you no longer need that performance level, you can return to the initial baseline performance tier.
Billing impact
Your billing changes as your performance tier changes. For example, if you provision a P10 disk (128 GiB), your baseline performance tier is set as P10 (500 IOPS and 100 MBps). You'll be billed at the P10 rate. You can upgrade the tier to match the performance of P50 (7,500 IOPS and 250 MBps) without increasing the disk size. During the time of the upgrade, you'll be billed at the P50 rate. When you no longer need the higher performance, you can return to the P10 tier. The disk will once again be billed at the P10 rate.
For billing information, see Managed disk pricing.
What tiers can be changed
The following table depicts which tiers each baseline performance tier can upgrade to.
| Disk size | Baseline performance tier | Can be upgraded to |
|---|---|---|
| 4 GiB | P1 | P2, P3, P4, P6, P10, P15, P20, P30, P40, P50 |
| 8 GiB | P2 | P3, P4, P6, P10, P15, P20, P30, P40, P50 |
| 16 GiB | P3 | P4, P6, P10, P15, P20, P30, P40, P50 |
| 32 GiB | P4 | P6, P10, P15, P20, P30, P40, P50 |
| 64 GiB | P6 | P10, P15, P20, P30, P40, P50 |
| 128 GiB | P10 | P15, P20, P30, P40, P50 |
| 256 GiB | P15 | P20, P30, P40, P50 |
| 512 GiB | P20 | P30, P40, P50 |
| 1 TiB | P30 | P40, P50 |
| 2 TiB | P40 | P50 |
| 4 TiB | P50 | None |
| 8 TiB | P60 | P70, P80 |
| 16 TiB | P70 | P80 |
| 32 TiB | P80 | None |
Next steps
To learn how to change your performance tier, see portal or PowerShell/CLI articles.