Premium vs. Standard Disk Storage in Windows Azure Virtual Machines

If you are building Virtual Machines in Windows Azure, you will probably need to add additional disk storage at some point in time as your needs grow.

However, you should be aware that Windows Azure Disk Storage has a different pricing model for Premium vs. Standard Disk Storage: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/storage/

You will immediately discover that Premium Disk Storage costs SIGNIFICANTLY more than Standard Disk Storage so it is important to make sure you choose the right type of Disk Storage for your needs.

You can follow the simple steps below to add a new disk to your Windows Azure virtual machine:

1. Select your virtual machine
2. Click on the Settings for your virtual machine
3. In the Settings menu, click on Disks
4. At the top of the Disks menu, you will see an icon for "Attach new"
5. Click on the Attach new icon
6. You will now be prompted for information regarding your new Disk.  
7. When you choose your disk, Windows Azure has now DEFAULTED the Type to Premium.  Therefore, you will want to change the selection to Standard
8. When you choose a Standard disk, the default size will be 1023 GB (approx. 1 TB).  You can then configure the location settings for your disk which will specify the storage account to use.
9. Once you click OK, your new disk will be added to your virtual machine!