1. BRK3310
Azure IaaS Design & Performance Considerations - Best Practices & Learnings from the field
Daniel Neumann
TSP – Azure Infrastructure at Microsoft
@neumanndaniel

2. Objectives Selecting the best VM size
Managed disks – Why you should use them?
Networking – Best practices
Encryption – Best practices
Azure Backup – Best practices

3. Selecting the best VM size

4. Azure compute unit is your friend
ACU is standarized on Standard_A1 being 100
ACU represents approximately how much faster other VM sizes are

5. Azure compute unit is your friend
SKU Family
ACU/Core
CPU A0 50
A1-A4 / A5-A7 / Av2
100
A8-A11
225
2.6 GHz Intel Xeon E5-2670
D / DS
160
Dv2 / DSv2 *
2.4 GHz Intel Xeon E v3 (Haswell)
F / Fs
G / GS *
Intel Xeon processor E5 v3 family H *
3.2 GHz Intel Xeon E v3 (Haswell) Ls
ACUs marked with a * use Intel® Turbo technology to increase CPU frequency and provide a performance boost. The amount of the boost can vary based on the VM size, workload, and other workloads running on the same host.

6. Azure compute unit is your friend
SKU Family
ACU/Core
CPU Ms
* **
2.5 GHz Intel Xeon E v3 (Haswell)
Dv3 / DSv3
* **
2.3 GHz Intel Xeon E v4 (Broadwell)
Ev3 ESv3 Bs
Burstable
2.4 GHz Intel Xeon E v3 (Haswell) or better
ACUs marked with a * use Intel® Turbo technology to increase CPU frequency and provide a performance boost. The amount of the boost can vary based on the VM size, workload, and other workloads running on the same host.
**Hyper-threaded.

7. Azure compute unit – example
VM size
vCPU
Memory
ACU total
$ Price 09/14/17 (West Europe)
Standard_A2 2
3.5 GB
200
$90.03
Standard_A2_v2
4 GB
$96.72
Standard_D1_v2 1
$100.44
Standard_F1
2 GB
$76.64
Standard_B2s
Burstable
$26.79
Standard_A4 8
14 GB
800
$482.12
Standard_A8_v2
16 GB
$427.80
Standard_D3_v2 4
$399.53
Standard_D4_v3
$315.46
Standard_F4
8 GB
$305.79
Standard_B4ms
$95.98

8. Azure VM sizes overview
Type
Sizes
Description
General purpose
Bs, Dsv3, Dv3, DSv2, Dv2, DS, D, Av2, A0-7
Balanced CPU-to-memory ratio. Ideal for testing and development, small to medium databases, and low to medium traffic web servers.
Compute optimized
Fs, F
High CPU-to-memory ratio. Good for medium traffic web servers, network appliances, batch processes, and application servers.
Memory optimized
Esv3, Ev3, Ms, GS, G, DSv2, DS, Dv2, D
High memory-to-core ratio. Great for relational database servers, medium to large caches, and in-memory analytics.
Storage optimized Ls
High disk throughput and IO. Ideal for Big Data, SQL, and NoSQL databases.
GPU
NV, NC
Specialized virtual machines targeted for heavy graphic rendering and video editing. Available with single or multiple GPUs.
High performance compute
H, A8-11
Our fastest and most powerful CPU virtual machines with optional high-throughput network interfaces (RDMA).

9. Azure VM sizes network performance
vCPU
Memory: GiB
Max NICs
Expected network performance
Standard_F1 1 2
750 Mbps
Standard_F2 4
1,5 Gbps
Standard_F4 8
3 Gbps
Standard_F8 16
6 Gbps
Standard_F16 32
6-12 Gbps
Standard_A8_v2
2 Gbps
Standard_G5
448
20 Gbps
Standard_D15_v2 20
140
25 Gbps (Accelerated)
Standard_M128s
128
2048
25 Gbps

10. Optimizing Azure VM network performance
Windows: Not always enabled by default
Check if Receive Side Scaling (RSS) is enabled:
Get-NetAdapterRss
Enable RSS:
Get-NetAdapter | % {Enable-NetAdapterRss -Name $_.Name}
Linux: Enabled by default

11. Azure VM sizes storage throughput
vCPU
Memory: GiB
Max data disks
Max uncached disk throughput: IOPS / MBps
Standard_F1s 1 2
3,200 / 48
Standard_F2s 4
6,400 / 96
Standard_F4s 8
12,800 / 192
Standard_F8s 16
25,600 / 384
Standard_F16s 32
51,200 / 768

12. Demo
Network bandwidth / Storage throughput

13. Managed disks Why you should use them?

14. Storage account limitations
Standard storage
Premium storage
Max IOPS per account
(50.000)* -
Max number of disks w/ max IOPS
40 (100)*
Total disk capacity per account
35 TB
Max number of disks w/ max capacity 35
Total snapshot capacity per account
10 TB
Max bandwidth per account
50 Gbps
Max number of VMs w/ max bandwidth
Depends on
New limits marked with a * are in place since 09/20/2017 in Azure.

15. Storage account limitations – example G5
G5 VM size:
1 OS disk (500 IOPS)
64 data disks (500 IOPS each)
Storage accounts needed:
2 storage accounts with
1st storage account: 1 OS disk and 39 data disks
2nd storage account: 25 data disks

16. Unmanaged vs. managed disks
Unmanaged disks
Managed disks
RBAC
Storage account level
Disk level
Tags
Locks
Replication
LRS, GRS, RA-GRS
LRS
Encryption
ADE, SSE
ADE, SSE on by default
Pricing
Standard per used GB
Premium per disk size
Per disk size
Storage account placement
Manual selection
Automatic
Storage account visibility
Visible
Not visible
Disk accessibility
Storage account name and key
SAS
One time SAS, generated for export

17. Unmanaged vs. managed disks

18. Using Storage Spaces in Azure best practices
Single virtual disk per pool with the Simple resiliency type.
Create virtual disks using New-Volume or New-VirtualDisk cmdlet to create the virtual disk with the same number of columns as physical disks (in this case, .vhd files).

19. Using Storage Spaces in Azure best practices
Use the Format-Volume cmdlet with the -AllocationUnitSize 64KB -UseLargeFRS parameters to format the volume with a 64 KB NTFS allocation unit size and enable large FRS support.
Install hotfix KB for Windows Server 2012 R2

20. Demo Microsoft Azure storage performance health check script

21. Networking Best practices

22. User defined route – DMZ / Firewall
Name
Address prefix
Next hop
VNET: Subnet local traffic
/24
Virtual network
VNET: Subnet to subnet traffic
/22
(NVA)
All other traffic /0

23. User defined route – KMS & Forced Tunneling
Name
Address prefix
Next hop
Forced tunneling /0
Virtual network gateway
KMS
/32
Internet

24. Demo
Network Watcher and effective route evaluation

25. Encryption Best practices

26. Requirements
Azure Disk Encryption requires that your Key Vault and VMs reside in the same Azure region and subscription.
Use the latest version of Azure PowerShell to configure Azure Disk Encryption

27. Example setup – ADE with one AAD SP

28. Example setup – ADE with two AAD SP

29. Example setup – SSE

30. Test parameters Tool: PerfInsights
Changed block size for throughput testing from 512KB to 2048KB

31. Test parameters Settings:
Azure VM size: Standard_D4_v2 / Standard_DS4_v2
OS: Windows Server 2016
100% write test
1GB test file
30 sec warm-up
90 sec test duration
3 runs each for IOPS and throughput testing

32. Test parameters OS disk Data disk File system NTFS
Allocation unit size
4 KB
64 KB
Caching
Read / write
None
IOPS testing block size
8 KB
Throughput (MBPS) testing block size -
2048 KB

33. SSE vs. ADE – Standard Managed Disks
Standard_D4_v2 – SSE
Standard_D4_v2 – ADE
OS disk IOPS (500)
(99%) IOPS
(99%) IOPS
Data disk IOPS (500)
Data disk throughput (60MB)
(99%) IOPS
60.00 (100%) MB/sec
(99%) IOPS
59,34 (99%) MB/sec
CPU average in % when creating 20 GB fixed VHD on data disk
0.215%
3.200 %

34. SSE vs. ADE – Premium Managed Disks
Standard_DS4_v2 – SSE
Standard_DS4_v2 – ADE
P10 OS disk IOPS (500)
(102%) IOPS
(102%) IOPS
P4 data disk IOPS (120)
P4 data disk throughput (25MB)
(102%) IOPS
24.32 (97%) MB/sec
(102%) IOPS
14.29 (57%) MB/sec
P6 data disk IOPS (240)
P6data disk throughput (50MB)
(102%) IOPS
48.65 (97%) MB/sec
(102%) IOPS
27.88 (56%) MB/sec
P10 data disk IOPS (500)
P10 data disk throughput (100MB)
509,97 (102%) IOPS
97.26 (97%) MB/sec
(102%) IOPS
57.01 (57%) MB/sec

35. SSE vs. ADE – Premium Managed Disks
Standard_DS4_v2 – SSE
Standard_DS4_v2 – ADE
P20 data disk IOPS (2300)
P20 data disk throughput (150MB)
(102%) IOPS
(97%) MB/sec
(102%) IOPS
(97%) MB/sec
P30 data disk IOPS (5000)
P30 data disk throughput (200MB)
(102%) IOPS
(97%) MB/sec
(102%) IOPS
(97%) MB/sec
P40 data disk IOPS (7500)
P40 data disk throughput (250MB)
(102%) IOPS
(96%) MB/sec
(102%) IOPS
(97%) MB/sec
P50 data disk IOPS (7500)
P50 data disk throughput (250MB)
(102%) IOPS
(96%) MB/sec
(102%) IOPS
(97%) MB/sec
CPU average in % when creating 20 GB fixed VHD on data disk
0.221%
2.934 %

36. ADE – Premium Managed Disks Changing block size for throughput
Block size 2048 KB
Block size 1024 KB
Block size 512 KB (default)
P4 data disk throughput (25MB)
14.29 (57%) MB/sec
17,31 (69%) MB/sec
22,17 (89%) MB/sec
P6 data disk throughput (50MB)
27.88 (56%) MB/sec
33,93 (68%) MB/sec
42,20 (84%) MB/sec
P10 data disk throughput (100MB)
57.01 (57%) MB/sec
71,54 (72%) MB/sec
90,42 (90%) MB/sec
P20 data disk throughput (150MB)
(97%) MB/sec
145,82 (97%) MB/sec
99,32 (66%) MB/sec
P30 data disk throughput (200MB)
(97%) MB/sec
181,19 (91%) MB/sec
98,59 (49%) MB/sec
P40 data disk throughput (250MB)
(97%) MB/sec
179,13 (72%) MB/sec
103,20 (41%) MB/sec
P50 data disk throughput (250MB)
(97%) MB/sec
180,76 (72%) MB/sec
96,56 (39%) MB/sec

37. Demo ADE performance test setup script

38. Azure Backup Best practices

39. Requirements
Azure Backup requires that your Recovery Services vault and VMs reside in the same Azure region and subscription, when you want to use Azure VM backup.
Backup and restore of encrypted VMs is supported only for VMs that are using ADE with a Key Encryption Key (KEK).

40. Sizing / Performance
Use more than one Recovery Services vault for backup
Max. 200 Azure IaaS VMs can be registered per vault
Max. 25 Recovery Services vaults, per supported region of Azure Backup, per subscription
Backup performance / time also depends on VM size
Backup operation
Best-case throughput
Initial backup
160 Mbps (20 MBps)
Incremental backup (DR)
640 Mbps (80 MBps)

41. Best practices
Do not schedule more than 40 VMs to back up at the same time.
Schedule VM backups during non-peak hours.
Make sure that python version on Linux VMs enabled for backup is 2.7

42. Example setup

43. Demo
Microsoft Azure Recovery Services vault performance health check script

44. Take aways

45. Take aways Selecting the best VM size: Managed disks: Networking:
Get as much details as you can for the workload that will run in the Azure VM
Do not look only at CPU and memory, cover also network and storage
Size the VM appropriate to the workload requirements
Managed disks:
Always use managed disk (or whenever it is possible)
Networking:
Make sure RSS is enabled on Windows Server VMs
Use NSGs and UDRs whenever it is possible to isolate or optimize network traffic

46. Take aways Encryption: Backup: SSE has no performance impact
ADE has some performance impact
CPU: Up to 3% more CPU usage
IOPS are not impacted
Throughput impact depends on the block size the application / workload uses
Backup:
Keep the requirements and best practices in mind, when dealing with Azure Backup for Azure VMs

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Tech Ready 15
9/16/2018
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