For what purpose are temporary disks in Azure VMs primarily used?

Temporary disks in Azure VMs are primarily used for high-performance temporary storage. These disks provide fast local storage that is ideal for scenarios where low latency and high throughput are necessary. They are typically used for operations that demand quick read/write access, such as storing transient data, caching, or scratch space for applications.

The temporary disk is not persistent; it is deleted when the VM is deallocated or decommissioned. Therefore, it is suitable for data that doesn't need to be retained permanently, such as system files, page files, or temporary outputs from processing tasks. Users often leverage the high IOPS (Input/Output Operations Per Second) capability of temporary disks to improve application performance throughout the lifecycle of the VM.

In contrast, the other options relate to data retention strategies that require persistent storage solutions, which do not align with the temporary nature of this disk type.