| title | description | services | documentationcenter | author | manager | editor | ms.assetid | ms.service | ms.workload | ms.tgt_pltfrm | ms.topic | ms.date | ms.author |
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Performance considerations for Azure NetApp Files | Microsoft Docs |
Learn about performance for Azure NetApp Files, including the relationship of quota and throughput limit and how to dynamically increase/decrease volume quota. |
azure-netapp-files |
b-hchen |
azure-netapp-files |
storage |
na |
conceptual |
02/19/2021 |
anfdocs |
The throughput limit for a volume with automatic QoS is determined by a combination of the quota assigned to the volume and the service level selected. For volumes with manual QoS, the throughput limit can be defined individually. When you make performance plans about Azure NetApp Files, you need to understand several considerations.
The throughput limit is only one determinant of the actual performance that will be realized.
Typical storage performance considerations, including read and write mix, the transfer size, random or sequential patterns, and many other factors will contribute to the total performance delivered.
The maximum empirical throughput that has been observed in testing is 4,500 MiB/s. At the Premium storage tier, an automatic QoS volume quota of 70.31 TiB will provision a throughput limit that is high enough to achieve this level of performance.
In the case of automatic QoS volumes, if you are considering assigning volume quota amounts beyond 70.31 TiB, additional quota may be assigned to a volume for storing additional data. However, the added quota will not result in a further increase in actual throughput.
The same empirical throughput ceiling applies to volumes with manual QoS. The maximum throughput can assign to a volume is 4,500 MiB/s.
This section describes quota management and throughput for volumes with the automatic QoS type.
If a workload’s performance is throughput-limit bound, it is possible to overprovision the automatic QoS volume quota to set a higher throughput level and achieve higher performance.
For example, if an automatic QoS volume in the Premium storage tier has only 500 GiB of data but requires 128 MiB/s of throughput, you can set the quota to 2 TiB so that the throughput level is set accordingly (64 MiB/s per TB * 2 TiB = 128 MiB/s).
If you consistently overprovision a volume for achieving a higher throughput, consider using the manual QoS volumes or using a higher service level instead. In the example above, you can achieve the same throughput limit with half the automatic QoS volume quota by using the Ultra storage tier instead (128 MiB/s per TiB * 1 TiB = 128 MiB/s).
If your performance requirements are temporary in nature, or if you have increased performance needs for a fixed period of time, you can dynamically increase or decrease volume quota to instantaneously adjust the throughput limit. Note the following considerations:
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Volume quota can be increased or decreased without any need to pause IO, and access to the volume is not interrupted or impacted.
You can adjust the quota during an active I/O transaction against a volume. Note that volume quota can never be decreased below the amount of logical data that is stored in the volume.
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When volume quota is changed, the corresponding change in throughput limit is nearly instantaneous.
The change does not interrupt or impact the volume access or I/O.
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Adjusting volume quota might require a change in capacity pool size.
The capacity pool size can be adjusted dynamically and without impacting volume availability or I/O.
If you use manual QoS volumes, you don’t have to overprovision the volume quota to achieve a higher throughput because the throughput can be assigned to each volume independently. However, you still need to ensure that the capacity pool is pre-provisioned with sufficient throughput for your performance needs. The throughput of a capacity pool is provisioned according to its size and service level. See Service levels for Azure NetApp Files for more details.