Windows Azure Storage Benefits Increase
If you have a MSDN account and are using your Windows Azure Benefits, or if you are simply using one of the Free Windows Azure Trial accounts, then last week your quotas for the Windows Azure Storage were increased!
| 90- Day Free Trial / Azure Pass | MSDN Proffessional / Cloud Essentials | MSDN Premium | MSDN Ultimate / BizSpark | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Storage | 35 GB | 35 GB | 40 GB | 45 GB |
| Storage Transactions | 50M | 50M | 75M | 100M |
These are the quotas for the base allowed per month. If you go over these then you have the option to remove the spending cap and pay on the “as you go” rates. Check out the individual plan for more details, or the pricing information.
This should help people trying out the new Virtual Machine preview features. Now, you might be thinking, “35GB? That’s not enough to have even one VM!”. Windows Azure Virtual Machines (WAVM) uses the Windows Azure Storage subsystem to back the persisted drives for the VM instances. The storage mechanism for these drives is the same technology used by Windows Azure Drives (XDrive), which means it’s based on storage of page blobs. Even though when you set up a VM and indicate it will be a 60 GB drive, only those pages that have data in your underlying storage account will be charged for 1. So, if you load the OS up and add an application and only take up 10 GB, you’ll only be using 10 GB of your 35GB (if you are an Azure Pass or MSDN Professional user, 45 GB if you are MSDN Premium, Ultimate or BizSpark user).
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If you fill up all the pages the system doesn’t support a TRIM feature yet, so there’s no way to remove data from the pages even if you delete the contents of the drive on the VM. Make sure to send feedback of wanting a TRIM feature ASAP so that it gets high ranking on the roadmap. Remember, WAVM is under preview so the more feedback we all can provide the better we can make the platform. ↩︎