A SNIA event
September 15-17, 2025

Direct Drive - Azure's Next-generation Block Storage Architecture

Mon Sep 12 | 9:30am
Location:
Salon V
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.

Learning Objectives

  • 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

Download the Presentation

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Greg Kramer
Microsoft
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