How can an Azure worker role use SSD storage?

Question

We want to run a worker role to perform disk intensive database upgrades and scale-out instances as we have more of them to do.

It would appear that we can't take advantage of the DS series virtual machines sizes for worker roles. After setting the zmsize to the DS series machine we want we got this error:

Value 'Standard_DS3' specified for parameter 'RoleSize' is invalid.
Allowed values are
'ExtraSmall,Small,Medium,Large,ExtraLarge,A5,A6,A7,A8,A9,A10,A11,Standard_D1,
Standard_D2,Standard_D3,Standard_D4,Standard_D11,Standard_D12,Standard_D13,
Standard_D14'.

Is there any way to attach SSD storage to a worker role?

Answer 1

Unfortunately the only way to get SSD performance for Cloud Service web and worker roles is to use D series and the D drive will be ssd. This is a temporary drive so you should not use it for persistent data but you can use it for calculations.

Here is a link with more detail

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/cloud-services-sizes-specs/

I hope this helps Niall Moran @niallermoran