Virtual Machine series

A-Series

Entry-level VMs for dev/test

A-series VMs have CPU performance and memory configurations best suited for entry-level workloads such as development and test, code repositories etc. They are economical and provide a low-cost option to get started with Azure. Av2 Standard is the latest generation of non-hyper-threaded A-series VMs with similar CPU performance but more RAM per vCPU and faster disks. Basic and Standard A-series VMs will retire on 31 August 2024.

Example workloads include development and test servers, low-traffic web servers, small to medium databases, servers for proof of concepts and code repositories.

Bs-Series

Economical burstable VMs

Bs-series VMs are economical virtual machines that provide a low-cost option for workloads that typically run at a low-to-moderate baseline CPU utilisation, but sometimes need to burst to significantly higher CPU utilisation when the demand rises. Bs-series VMs are not hyper-threaded.

Example workloads include development and test servers, low-traffic web servers, small databases, micro services, servers for proof of concepts and build servers.

D-Series

General purpose compute

The D-series Azure VMs offer a combination of vCPUs, memory and temporary storage that are able to meet the requirements associated with most production workloads.

The Dv3 virtual machines are hyper-threaded, general-purpose VMs based on the 2.3 GHz Intel® XEON ® E5-2673 v4 (Broadwell) processor. They can achieve 3.5 GHz with Intel Turbo Boost Technology 2.0.

The Dv4 and Ddv4 virtual machines are based on a customised Intel® Xeon® Platinum 8272CL processor, which runs at a base speed of 2.5Ghz and can achieve up to 3.4Ghz all core turbo frequency. The Dd v4 virtual machine sizes feature fast, large local SSD storage (up to 2,400 GiB) and are well suited for applications that benefit from low latency, high-speed local storage. The Dv4 virtual machine sizes do not have any temporary storage.

The Dv5 and Ddv5 series virtual machines feature the 3rd Generation Intel® Xeon® Platinum 8370C (Ice Lake) processor in a hyper-threaded configuration. They can scale up to 96 vCPUs with configurations similar to the Dv4 and Ddv4 series VMs.

The Dav4 and Dasv4 Azure VM-series provide up to 96 vCPUs, 384 GiBs of RAM and 2,400 GiBs of SSD-based temporary storage and feature the AMD EPYC™ 7452 processor.

The Dasv5 and Dadsv5-series virtual machines are based on the 3rd Generation AMD EPYC™ 7763v (Milan) processor. This processor can achieve a boosted maximum frequency of 3.5GHz. The VM series provide sizes with (Dadsv5) and without local temporary storage (Dasv5), and a better value proposition for most general-purpose workloads compared to the prior Dav4 and Dasv4 generation.

The Dpsv5 and Dpdsv5 VM series feature the Ampere Altra 64-bit Multi-Core Arm-based processor operating at up to 3.0GHz frequency. The Ampere Altra processor was engineered for scale-out cloud environments and can deliver efficient performance to reduce overall environmental impact. The Dplsv5 and Dpldsv5 VM sizes offer one of the lowest price points of entry within the general-purpose Azure Virtual Machines portfolio, and provide 2GiBs per vCPU delivering a compelling value proposition for many general-purpose Linux workloads that do not require larger amounts of RAM per vCPU.

The Ds, Dds, Das, Dads, Dps, Dpds, Dpls and Dplds VM series support Azure Premium SSDs and Ultra Disk storage depending on regional availability.

Example workloads include many enterprise-grade applications, e-commerce systems, web front ends, desktop virtualisation solutions, customer relationship management applications, entry-level and mid-range databases, application servers, gaming servers, media servers and more...

E Series

Optimised for in-memory applications

The E-series Azure VMs are optimised for heavy in-memory applications such as SAP HANA. These VMs are configured with high memory-to-core ratios, which makes them well-suited for memory-intensive enterprise applications, large relational database servers, in-memory analytics workloads etc.

The Ev3-series VMs range from 2 to 64 vCPUs and 16-432 GiB of RAM, respectively.

The Ev4 and Edv4 VMs are based on a customised Intel® Xeon® Platinum 8272CL processor, which runs at a base speed of 2.5Ghz and can achieve up to 3.4Ghz all core turbo frequency. The Ev4 and Edv4 virtual machine sizes feature up to 504 GiB of RAM. The Edv4 also include a fast and large local SSD storage (up to 2,400 GiB) to run applications that benefit from low latency, high-speed local storage. The Ev4 virtual machine sizes do not have any temporary storage.

The Ev5 and Edv5 VMs are based on the 3rd Generation Intel® Xeon® Platinum 8370C (Ice Lake) processor in a hyper-threaded configuration. This customised processor can reach an all-core Turbo clock speed of up to 3.5GHz. The VMs feature up to 672 GiB of RAM, provide sizes with (Edsv5) and without local temporary storage (Esv5) and can scale up to 104 vCPUs on isolated instances.

The increased remote storage performance of the Ebsv5 and Ebdsv5 VMs is ideal for storage throughput-intensive workloads, such as large relational databases and data analytics applications. The Ebdsv5 and Ebsv5 VMs provide up to 300% increase in remote storage performance compared to prior VM generations and can help consolidate existing workloads on fewer VMs, or on smaller VM sizes while achieving potential cost savings.

The Eav4 and Easv4 Azure VM-series feature the AMD EPYC™ 7452 processor and provide up to 96 vCPUs, 672 GiBs of RAM and 2,400 GiBs of SSD-based temporary storage.

The Easv5 and Eadsv5 VMs are based on the 3rd Generation AMD EPYC™ 7763v (Milan) processor. This processor can achieve a boosted maximum frequency of 3.5GHz. The VM series provide sizes with (Eadsv5) and without local temporary storage (Easv5), and a better value proposition for most general-purpose workloads compared to the prior Eav4 and Easv4 generation.

The Epsv5 and Epdsv5 VM series feature the Ampere Altra 64-bit Multi-Core Arm-based processor operating at up to 3.0GHz frequency. The Ampere Altra processor was engineered for scale-out cloud environments and can deliver efficient performance to reduce overall environmental impact.

The Es, Eds, Eas, Eads, Ebs, Ebds, Eps, and Epds VM series support Azure Premium SSDs and Ultra Disk storage depending on regional availability.

Example workloads include SAP HANA (e.g., E64s v3, E20ds v4, E32ds v4, E48ds v4, E64ds v4), SAP S/4 HANA application layer, SAP NetWeaver application layer, and more broadly memory-intensive enterprise applications, large relational database servers, data warehousing workloads, business intelligence applications, in-memory analytics workloads, and additional business-critical applications, including systems that process transactions of a financial nature.

F-Series

Compute optimised virtual machines

F-series VMs feature a higher CPU-to-memory ratio. They are equipped with 2 GB RAM and 16 GB of local solid state drive (SSD) per CPU core, and are optimised for compute-intensive workloads. The Fsv2-series features 2 GiB RAM and 8 GB of local temporary storage (SSD) per vCPU. The Fsv2-series is hyper-threaded and based on the 2.7 GHz Intel Xeon® Platinum 8168 (SkyLake) processor, which can achieve clock speeds as high as 3.7 GHz with the Intel Turbo Boost Technology 2.0.

Example workloads include batch processing, web servers, analytics and gaming.

G-Series

Memory and storage optimised virtual machines

G-series VMs feature the Intel® Xeon® processor E5 v3 family, two times more memory and four times more Solid State Drive storage (SSDs) than the General Purpose D-series. G-series features up to ½ TB of RAM and 32 CPU cores, and provide unparalleled computational performance, memory and local SSD storage for your most demanding applications.

Example workloads include large SQL and NoSQL databases, ERP, SAP and data warehousing solutions.

H Series

High-performance Computing virtual machines

The HB-series VMs are optimised for HPC applications, such as financial analysis, weather simulation and silicon RTL modelling. HB VMs feature up to 120 AMD EPYC™ 7003-series CPU cores, 448 GB of RAM and no hyperthreading. HB-series VMs also provide 350 GB/sec of memory bandwidth, up to 32 MB of L3 cache per core, up to 7 GB/s of block device SSD performance and clock frequencies up to 3.675 GHz.

The HC-series VMs are optimised for HPC applications driven by intensive computation, such as implicit finite element analysis, reservoir simulation and computational chemistry. HC VMs feature 44 Intel Xeon Platinum 8168 processor cores, 8 GB of RAM per CPU core, no hyper-threading and up to four Managed Disks. The Intel Xeon Platinum platform supports Intel’s rich ecosystem of software tools and features an all-cores clock speed of 3.4 GHz for most workloads.

Example workloads include fluid dynamics, finite element analysis, seismic processing, reservoir simulation, risk analysis, electronic design automation, rendering, Spark, weather modelling, quantum simulation, computational chemistry, heat transfer simulation.

M-Series

Memory-optimised virtual machines

The M-series family of Azure virtual machines is memory optimised and ideal for heavy in-memory workloads such as SAP HANA. The M-Series offers up to 4 TB of RAM on a single VM. In addition, these VMs offer a virtual CPU count of up to 128 vCPUs on a single VM to enable high-performance parallel processing.

Example workloads include SAP HANA, SAP S/4 HANA, SQL Hekaton and other large in-memory business-critical workloads requiring massive parallel compute power.

Mv2-series

Largest-memory optimised virtual machines

The Azure Mv2-series virtual machines are hyper-threaded and feature Intel® Xeon® Platinum 8180M 2.5GHz (Skylake) processors, offering up to 416 vCPU on a single VM and offer 3 TB, 6 TB and 12 TB memory configurations. This is by far the largest-memory virtual machine offered on Azure and provides unparalleled computational performance to support large in-memory databases.

Example workloads include SAP HANA, SAP S/4 HANA, SQL Hekaton and other large in-memory business-critical workloads requiring massive parallel compute power.

N series

GPU enabled virtual machines

The N-series is a family of Azure Virtual Machines with GPU capabilities. GPUs are ideal for compute and graphics-intensive workloads, helping customers to fuel innovation through scenarios such as high-end remote visualisation, deep learning and predictive analytics.

The N-series has three different offerings aimed at specific workloads:

• The NC-series is focused on high-performance computing and machine learning workloads. The latest version – NCsv3 – features NVIDIA’s Tesla V100 GPU.
• The NDs-series is focused on training and inference scenarios for deep learning. It uses the NVIDIA Tesla P40 GPUs. The latest version – NDv2 – features the NVIDIA Tesla V100 GPUs.
• The NV-series enables powerful remote visualisation workloads and other graphics-intensive applications backed by the NVIDIA Tesla M60 GPU.

NCsv3, NCsv2, NC and NDs VMs offer optional InfiniBand interconnect to enable scale-up performance.

Example workloads include simulation, deep learning, graphics rendering, video editing, gaming and remote visualisation.