Ryan Majidimehr has a bundle of updates for us:
We are always working to improve Azure Analytics Spark performance. We are making significant changes that will increase Spark performance by up to 77%.
Based on our testing using the 1TB TPC-H industry benchmark, you’re likely to see up to 77% increased performance. While your workload may perform differently than the TPC-H benchmark, everyone is expected to see improved performance. These Spark performance improvements come from moving to the latest Azure v5 VMs which have improved CPU performance, increased temporary SSD throughput, and lastly higher remote storage IOPS.
Click through for a whole bunch of updates.