Change your performance tier without downtime

Applies to: ✔️ Linux VMs ✔️ Windows VMs ✔️ Flexible 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 your Azure managed disk is set when you create your disk, in the form of its performance tier. The performance tier determines the IOPS and throughput your managed disk has. When you set the provisioned size of your disk, a performance tier is automatically selected. The performance tier can be changed at deployment or afterwards, without changing the size of the disk and without downtime. To learn more about performance tiers, see Performance tiers for managed disks.

Changing your performance tier has billing implications. See Billing impact for details.

Restrictions

• Changing the performance tier is currently only supported 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 the disk is attached to.
• Only disks larger than 4,096 GiB can use the P60, P70, and P80 performance tiers.
• A disk's performance tier can be downgraded only once every 12 hours.
• The system doesn't 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.
• You can't set a disk's performance tier to a tier below its baseline tier.

Caution

If you use Terraform to change the performance tier while a VM is running, Terraform shuts down your VM and attempts to restart it after the process is completed. Changing the performance tier with other methods avoids this.

Prerequisites

Azure CLI

Install the latest Azure CLI and sign in to an Azure account with az login.

PowerShell

Install the latest Azure PowerShell version, and sign in to an Azure account in with Connect-AzAccount.

Azure portal

Not applicable.

Create an empty data disk with a tier higher than the baseline tier

Azure CLI

Azure CLI

subscriptionId=<yourSubscriptionIDHere>
resourceGroupName=<yourResourceGroupNameHere>
diskName=<yourDiskNameHere>
diskSize=<yourDiskSizeHere>
performanceTier=<yourDesiredPerformanceTier>
region=westcentralus

az account set --subscription $subscriptionId

az disk create -n $diskName -g $resourceGroupName -l $region --sku Premium_LRS --size-gb $diskSize --tier $performanceTier

Create an OS disk with a tier higher than the baseline tier from an Azure Marketplace image

Azure CLI

resourceGroupName=<yourResourceGroupNameHere>
diskName=<yourDiskNameHere>
performanceTier=<yourDesiredPerformanceTier>
region=westcentralus
image=Canonical:UbuntuServer:18.04-LTS:18.04.202002180

az disk create -n $diskName -g $resourceGroupName -l $region --image-reference $image --sku Premium_LRS --tier $performanceTier

PowerShell

Azure PowerShell

$subscriptionId='yourSubscriptionID'
$resourceGroupName='yourResourceGroupName'
$diskName='yourDiskName'
$diskSizeInGiB=4
$performanceTier='P50'
$sku='Premium_LRS'
$region='westcentralus'

Connect-AzAccount

Set-AzContext -Subscription $subscriptionId

$diskConfig = New-AzDiskConfig -SkuName $sku -Location $region -CreateOption Empty -DiskSizeGB $diskSizeInGiB -Tier $performanceTier
New-AzDisk -DiskName $diskName -Disk $diskConfig -ResourceGroupName $resourceGroupName

Azure portal

The following steps show how to change the performance tier of your disk when you first create the disk:

1. Sign in to the Azure portal.
2. Navigate to the VM you'd like to create a new disk for.
3. When selecting the new disk, first choose the size, of disk you need.
4. Once you've selected a size, then select a different performance tier, to change its performance.
5. Select OK to create the disk.

Update the tier of a disk without downtime

A disk's performance tier can be changed without downtime, so you don't have to deallocate your VM or detach your disk to change the tier.

Azure CLI

1. Update the tier of a disk even when it is attached to a running VM

   Azure CLI

   resourceGroupName=<yourResourceGroupNameHere>
   diskName=<yourDiskNameHere>
   performanceTier=<yourDesiredPerformanceTier>
   
   az disk update -n $diskName -g $resourceGroupName --set tier=$performanceTier
   

PowerShell

1. Update the tier of a disk even when it is attached to a running VM

   Azure PowerShell

   $resourceGroupName='yourResourceGroupName'
   $diskName='yourDiskName'
   $performanceTier='P1'
   
   $diskUpdateConfig = New-AzDiskUpdateConfig -Tier $performanceTier
   
   Update-AzDisk -ResourceGroupName $resourceGroupName -DiskName $diskName -DiskUpdate $diskUpdateConfig
   

Azure portal

A disk's performance tier can be changed without downtime, so you don't have to deallocate your VM or detach your disk to change the tier.

1. Navigate to the VM containing the disk you'd like to change.
2. Select your disk
3. Select Size + Performance.
4. In the Performance tier dropdown, select a tier other than the disk's current performance tier.
5. Select Resize.

Show the tier of a disk

Azure CLI

Azure CLI

az disk show -n $diskName -g $resourceGroupName --query [tier] -o tsv

PowerShell

Azure PowerShell

$disk = Get-AzDisk -ResourceGroupName $resourceGroupName -DiskName $diskName

$disk.Tier

Azure portal

To find a disk's current performance tier in the Azure portal, navigate to that individual disk's Size + Performance page and examine the Performance tier dropdown's default selection.

Next steps

If you need to resize a disk to take advantage of the higher performance tiers, see these articles:

• Expand virtual hard disks on a Linux VM with the Azure CLI
• Expand a managed disk attached to a Windows virtual machine