Support for new VM sizes
Published date: October 03, 2016
In recent weeks, two new VMs that can be used with Azure Batch have become available. H-series VMs are an excellent fit for compute-intensive workloads and provide cutting-edge performance, as well as an RDMA back-end network for MPI workloads. N-series VMs were announced in preview, and provide cutting-edge GPUs for both GPU-accelerated compute and GPU visualization. Both of these VM series can be used with Azure Batch pools.
H-series VMs are available for both Azure Cloud Services and Azure Virtual Machines pools, so you can specify it on a Batch pool by using either cloudServiceConfiguration or virtualMachineConfiguration. N-series VMs are available only for Virtual Machines, so you can specify them for a Batch pool by using only virtualMachineConfiguration.
For available VM sizes, see the following documentation:
Because the H-series and N-series sizes are initially available in one region (South Central US), you must submit a specific Batch account core quota support request for the VMs that you want to use—you can’t use an existing Batch account core quota. These VM sizes will also not appear in the Azure portal when you're creating a new Batch pool. When the VMs are available in other regions, this process will no longer be necessary. The existing Batch account core quota will be used, and the portal will show these VM sizes during pool creation.
To use these new VM sizes, you must create a new Batch account, and then submit a support request to increase the core quota. You can find the process for Batch core quota increases in Quotas and limits for the Azure Batch service. In addition to the number of cores, be sure to specify the VM that you want to use: NC-series, NV-series, or H-series.