📝 Azure Managed Disk Snapshot is stored on Premium SSDs Managed Disk storage 🟢

• Contextual name: 📝 Managed Disk Snapshot is stored on Premium SSDs Managed Disk storage 🟢
• ID: /ce/ca/azure/virtual-machine/premium-managed-disk-snapshot
• Located in: 📁 Azure Virtual Machine

Flags

• 🟢 Policy with categories
• 🟢 Policy with type
• 🟢 Production policy

Our Metadata

• Policy Type: COMPLIANCE_POLICY
• Policy Category:
  • COST

Logic

• 🧠 prod.logic.yaml 🟢
  • 📕 Azure Snapshot
  • 🔌 Azure Snapshot - object.extracts.yaml
  • 🧪 test-data.json

Description

Open File

Description

Ensure that Azure Managed Disk snapshots are stored on cost-effective Standard-tier storage rather than Premium SSDs. Premium SSDs are designed for performance-intensive workloads, whereas snapshots are typically used for point-in-time backups and disaster recovery scenarios that do not require high performance or low-latency access.

Rationale

Premium SSDs are engineered to deliver high IOPS and throughput for latency-sensitive production workloads. However, these performance characteristics are not required for snapshots, which primarily serve as backup and recovery artifacts.

By utilizing Standard HDD or Standard SSD storage tiers, you can significantly reduce snapshot storage costs without compromising data durability or recovery capabilities.

Audit

This policy flags Azure Snapshots as INCOMPLIANT if the Disk SKU Name contains the keyword Premium, indicating that the snapshot resides on Premium SSDs Managed Disk storage.

Remediation

Open File

Remediation

Azure does not currently support changing the storage tier (SKU) of an existing snapshot. To transition a snapshot from Premium SSD to a Standard storage, the current Premium snapshot must be re-created using a Standard SKU (Standard_LRS or Standard_ZRS). This re-creation can be done from either the original managed disk, if it still exists or the existing premium snapshot itself.

Create a New Snapshot Using a Standard SKU

Specify the appropriate source resource ID in the --source or -SourceUri field.

Azure CLI

az snapshot create \
--resource-group {{resource-group-name}} \
--source {{resource-id-of-source-disk-or-snapshot}} \
--name {{new-standard-snapshot-name}} \
--sku {{Standard_LRS / Standard_ZRS}} \
--location {{snapshot-location}}

• --source can be a Managed Disk name (if in the same resource group), or the full resource ID of a snapshot or disk.

PowerShell

$resourceGroup = "{{resource-group-name}}"
$sourceResourceId = "{{resource-id-of-source-disk-or-snapshot}}"
$newSnapshotName = "{{new-standard-snapshot-name}}"

... [see more](remediation.md)

policy.yaml

Open File

Linked Framework Sections

Section	Sub Sections	Internal Rules	Policies	Flags
💼 Cloudaware Framework → 💼 Waste Reduction			9