Turbocharge Your Business: 7x Faster AI and Databases with Azure Container Storage

Key points

Azure Container Storage v2.0.0 is now available, delivering up to 7 times higher IOPS and 4 times less latency compared to previous versions.

The new release offers improved resource efficiency and enhanced performance with local NVMe drives, making it ideal for stateful workloads like relational databases and AI inferencing.

Azure Container Storage is now completely free to use, with no additional service costs, and is available as an open-source version for installation on non-AKS clusters.

As a reporter, I’ve just received word from sources close to Microsoft that the company has announced a major update to Azure Container Storage, a cloud-native volume management and orchestration service designed for Kubernetes. This new release, version 2.0.0, promises to deliver breakthrough performance with local NVMe storage, making it the fastest and most powerful Kubernetes storage platform on Azure.

According to sources, Azure Container Storage has been optimized for local NVMe drives, which are provided with a variety of VM families. This focus unlocks the fastest possible I/O performance for demanding workloads while reducing infrastructure costs. The new release also offers improved resource efficiency, with a dramatic reduction in cluster resource consumption. In fact, Azure Container Storage v2.0.0 no longer has performance tiers, instead delivering superior performance while using fewer resources than ever before.

But what does this mean for real-world workloads? Sources tell me that the new release has been tested with PostgreSQL for AKS, and the results are impressive. PostgreSQL transactions per second improved by 60% while cutting latency by over 30%. This means faster query responses, higher throughput, and better user experiences for database-driven applications.

The new release also accelerates AI model loading and integrates with KAITO, the first Kubernetes-native controller for automating AI model deployment. With Azure Container Storage v2.0.0, model file loading speed has improved by 5 times, compared to using an ephemeral OS disk. This reduces time-to-inference and improves overall AI application responsiveness.

In addition to these performance enhancements, Azure Container Storage v2.0.0 offers more flexible scaling options, including support for clusters of any size, including single-node deployments. This flexibility is particularly valuable for applications with robust built-in replication or backup capabilities, development environments, and edge deployments where high-performance storage is needed without the overhead of larger clusters.

The new release is also open-source, built on newly created open-source repositories, making it accessible to the broader Kubernetes community. Whether you need the Azure-managed version for seamless AKS integration or prefer the community open-source version for self-hosted Kubernetes clusters, you get the same great product and features.

Overall, Azure Container Storage v2.0.0 delivers a significant performance boost for I/O-demanding workloads out of the box, without additional configuration needed. With its improved performance, enhanced resource efficiency, and open-source approach, Azure Container Storage is an attractive option for developers building on Kubernetes. As Microsoft continues to invest in Azure and Kubernetes, it’s clear that the company is committed to providing the best possible tools and services for developers. With Azure Container Storage v2.0.0, developers can expect faster, more efficient, and more scalable storage solutions for their Kubernetes workloads.