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Azure deployment guidelines

As a general guideline, we recommend:

  • ARM-based CPU.
  • A 1:8 ratio of vCPU to GiB memory.
  • An 8:1 ratio of GiB local instance storage to GiB memory when using swap.

When operating on Azure in production, we recommend Epdsv6 sizes Azure VM Types with Local NVMe Disk:

VM Size vCPUs Memory Ephemeral Disk Disk-to-RAM Ratio
Standard_E2pds_v6 2 16 GiB 75 GiB ~4.7:1
Standard_E4pds_v6 4 32 GiB 150 GiB ~4.7:1
Standard_E8pds_v6 8 64 GiB 300 GiB ~4.7:1
Standard_E16pds_v6 16 128 GiB 600 GiB ~4.7:1
Standard_E32pds_v6 32 256 GiB 1,200 GiB ~4.7:1
WARNING! These VM types provide ephemeral local NVMe SSD disks. Data is lost when the VM is stopped or deleted.

Locally-attached NVMe storage

Configuring swap on nodes to use locally-attached NVMe storage allows Materialize to spill to disk when operating on datasets larger than main memory. This setup can provide significant cost savings and provides a more graceful degradation rather than OOMing. Network-attached storage (like EBS volumes) can significantly degrade performance and is not supported.

Swap support

    New Unified Terraform

    The unified Materialize Terraform module supports configuring swap out of the box.

    Legacy Terraform

    The Legacy Terraform provider, adds preliminary swap support in v0.6.1, via the swap_enabled variable. With this change, the Terraform:

    • Creates a node group for Materialize.
    • Configures NVMe instance store volumes as swap using a daemonset.
    • Enables swap at the Kubelet.

    See Upgrade Notes.

    NOTE: If deploying v25.2, Materialize clusters will not automatically use swap unless they are configured with a memory_request less than their memory_limit. In v26, this will be handled automatically.

    Materialize writes block blobs on Azure. As a general guideline, we recommend Premium block blob storage accounts.

    TLS

    When running with TLS in production, run with certificates from an official Certificate Authority (CA) rather than self-signed certificates.

    Upgrading guideline

    Whe upgrading:

    • Always check the version specific upgrade notes.

    • Always upgrade the operator first and ensure version compatibility between the operator and the Materialize instance you are upgrading to.

    • Always upgrade your Materialize instances after upgrading the operator to ensure compatibility.

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