Predicting and detecting failures: How Azure strengthens reliability for mission-critical workloads

From the source

Takeaway : Azure Failure Prediction and Detection (AFPD) is Microsoft Azure’s end-to-end system aiming to catch hardware failures before they interrupt a workload, not after. Across the Azure fleet, AFPD has improved the prevention of hardware-related VM interruptions by 36% .

SAP workloads offer a compelling example of AFPD’s value, illustrating why preventing interruptions matters for mission-critical services. But AFPD isn’t specific to SAP: it operates across General Purpose, Specialized Compute, HPC/AI, and select Storage workloads, making SAP’s experience a window into Azure’s broader approach to reliability for mission-critical third-party services.

To learn more, watch our companion video to learn how AFPD helps reduce the risk of failures disrupting your critical workloads. Reliability engineered into the platform Most conversations about cloud reliability focus on what you build: zone-redundant architectures, failover patterns, and backup strategies.

Less visible, but just as consequential, is what the platform does on your behalf; before a failure ever becomes an incident you need to respond to. That’s the premise behind AFPD, which became fully operational in 2024. …

azure.microsoft.com