Put simply, when you see small disk in azure it means that your machine will have a 30GB disk instead of the usual default of 128 GB.
If you think 30 gigabyte is small, you are correct, but remember that one of the big things that chews up small C:\ is the paging file, but in Azure your servers page file is running on a separate, hidden drive.
To give you some context, let’s look at how large page files should be.
How Big Should a Page File Be?
Here are Microsoft recommendations for page file sizing:
- Minium Page File Size = RAM / 8
- Maximum Page File Size = 3 x RAM
Most techs use a 1.5 x 8 rule so if your server has 16Gb of RAM your page file would likely be 24GB in size. That does not fit well on a server with only a 30GB disk, which is why it is so nice the Microsoft puts its Azure page files on a disk you don’t see or pay for.
So Azure Small Disk servers are practical if you are following best practices and keeping your data and applications on a second disk volume.
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