NVMe Storage on Azure
Azure supports NVMe through local storage VMs (Lsv3 series) and Ultra Disk for persistent NVMe-class block storage. For the lowest latency shared storage in AKS or multi-VM architectures, a self-managed NVMe-oF/TCP layer provides 5–10× lower latency than managed disk.
NVMe-Equipped Instance Types
| Instance Family | NVMe Characteristics |
|---|---|
| Lsv3-series | Up to 80TB local NVMe — highest storage density on Azure |
| Lasv3-series | AMD EPYC with local NVMe SSDs for storage workloads |
| Ebsv5 / Ebdsv5 | Remote NVMe via Ultra Disk; highest IOPS for persistent storage |
| NVadsA10v5 | GPU instances with local NVMe for AI/ML checkpoint storage |
Azure Lsv3 local NVMe is ephemeral. Ultra Disk provides persistent NVMe-class performance (up to 400K IOPS per disk) but at higher cost and 100–500µs latency. NVMe-oF/TCP on Lsv3 nodes bridges the gap: persistent, shared, and 25–40µs.
NVMe-oF/TCP on Azure
Deploy NVMe-oF/TCP storage nodes on Lsv3 VMs. Their local NVMe arrays become the storage backend; NVMe namespaces are served to compute VMs or AKS nodes over the VNet at 25–40µs. This provides persistent shared NVMe storage at lower latency than Ultra Disk and lower cost than Azure NetApp Files.
For the NVMe/TCP protocol deep-dive, see nvme-tcp.com → For a full NVMe-oF architecture overview, see the NVMe-oF guide.
Recommended Storage Architecture
| Tier / Use Case | Recommendation |
|---|---|
| Ephemeral scratch | Lsv3 local NVMe (fastest, non-persistent) |
| Persistent single-node | Ultra Disk (100–500µs, up to 400K IOPS) |
| Shared cluster (low latency) | NVMe-oF/TCP on Lsv3 (25–40µs, 1M+ IOPS) |
| AKS PersistentVolumes | NVMe-oF CSI driver or Azure Disk CSI driver |
| Network | Azure Accelerated Networking (up to 200Gbps) |
simplyblock: NVMe/TCP storage for Azure
simplyblock deploys as a software-defined NVMe/TCP storage cluster on standard Azure instances. It provides Kubernetes CSI, dynamic provisioning, and sub-40µs persistent block storage — without proprietary hardware or cloud-managed disk limits.
Managed PostgreSQL on Azure
vela.run provides managed PostgreSQL on Azure with NVMe/TCP storage — sub-millisecond query latency for Azure-native applications.
vela.run →