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Where To Store SQL Server DB Files In Azure

James Serra gives us a few options for storing database files (that is, your MDF, NDF, and LDF files) when running SQL Server in an Azure VM:

If using managed disks, the recommendation is to attach several premium SSDs to a VM.  From Sizes for Windows virtual machines in Azure you can see for the size DS5_v2 you can add 64 of 4TB data disks (P50) yielding the potential total volume size of up to 256TB per VM, and if you use the preview sizes (P80) your application can have up to around 2PB of storage per VM (64 of 32TB disks).  With premium storage disks, your applications can achieve 80,000 I/O operations per second (IOPS) per VM, and a disk throughput of up to 2,000 megabytes per second (MB/s) per VM.  Note the more disks you add the more storage you get and the more IOPS you get, but only up to a certain point due to VM limits, meaning at some point more disks get you more storage but not more IOPS.

But there are a few other options too, so check them out.