Storage performance is a critical component of an I/O heavy application like a database engine. Azure offers a broad array of storage options and can even build your storage solution to meet your workload requirements. Azure Storage is a highly scalable, secure storage platform that offers a range of solutions to meet the needs of many applications. [?] offers block storage that is presented to a virtual machine. These storage devices are managed just like in an on-premises server, except that they are virtualized. There are several performance tiers depending on your workload. This type of storage is the most commonly used type for SQL Server data and transaction log files.