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Azure Virtual Machine Scale Sets

Azure Virtual Machine Scale Sets

Automated virtual machine scaling that helps you cost-effectively simplify the deployment, management, and availability of your applications.

Create and manage thousands of virtual machines at scale

Build, on your terms, large-scale services for batch, big data, and container workloads using Azure Virtual Machine Scale Sets, which let you create and manage a group of heterogeneous load-balanced virtual machines (VMs). Increase or decrease the number of VMs automatically in response to demand or based on a schedule you define. Centrally manage, configure, and update thousands of VMs and provide higher availability and security for your applications.

Create and deploy thousands of VMs in minutes with integrated load balancing and autoscaling based on centralized templates

Manage and automatically scale your VM pool based on customizable metrics, and consistently control and deploy VM updates

Increase the availability of your stateful and stateless applications across availability zones and fault domains with a few simple steps

Choose VM images and consumption models that best fit your needs while deploying your VMs using your favorite DevOps toolchain

Simplify the management and governance of your VMs

Automate the creation and deployment of your VMs and automatically issue OS updates for improved compliance and security. Centralize your templates for a consistent rollout of your applications. Increase your focus on the application, avoid additional storage configuration or network management tasks. Deploy Virtual Machine Scale Sets using Azure Resource Manager templates—with support for Windows and Linux platform images, as well as custom images and extensions.

Learn about Azure Virtual Machines

Increase application resiliency

Increase application uptime by using availability zones and availability sets to automatically distribute VMs in a scale set within a single datacenter or across multiple datacenters. Scale sets run multiple VM instances of your application. Therefore, if one of these instances has a problem, your customers will continue to access your application with minimal disruption. Virtual Machine Scale Sets guarantee up to 99.99 percent service-level agreements (SLAs) for your VMs.

Run business critical applications on Azure

Optimize costs using unique capabilities

Optimize costs by minimizing the number of unnecessary VM instances that run your application when demand is low. Use your existing licenses to run Windows Server VMs on Azure with Azure Hybrid Benefit and combine Azure Reserved Virtual Machine Instances with Azure Hybrid Benefit to achieve additional savings. Run interruptible workloads with Spot VMs on scale sets and realize up to 90 percent cost reduction versus pay-as-you-go rates.

Explore Spot Virtual Machines

Deliver uncompromised application performance at scale

Use only the compute resources your application needs at any time without pre-provisioning your VMs. Be future ready by automatically scaling your cloud infrastructure to meet your changing performance requirements. Scale sets are elastic and designed to support your scale-out workloads, including stateless web front ends, container orchestration, and microservices clusters.

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) and Azure Service Fabric run on Virtual Machine Scale Sets.

Build a scalable application with scale sets

Decrease network administration complexity

Take advantage of the integration of Virtual Machine Scale Sets and Azure networking resources, such as Azure Load Balancer, to reduce cloud infrastructure management costs. Easily spread your workloads across the virtual machines in your scale sets and configure network address translation (NAT) rules to connect to specific virtual machine instances for troubleshooting. Focus more on what matters—your application—and less on the infrastructure.

Learn about Azure networking

Comprehensive security and compliance built-in to protect your applications at scale.

Microsoft invests more than $1 billion annually on cybersecurity research and development.
We employ more than 3,500 security experts who are dedicated to data security and privacy.
Azure has more certifications than any other cloud provider. View the comprehensive list.

ISO/IEC

CSA/CCM

ITAR

CJIS

HIPAA

IRS 1075

Learn more about security on Azure

Virtual Machine Scale Sets pricing

Virtual Machine Scale Sets are currently available for all Windows or Linux VM sizes on Azure. You are only charged for the VMs you deploy and any additional underlying infrastructure resources consumed, such as storage and networking. There are no incremental charges for the Virtual Machine Scale Sets service itself.

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Everything you need to get started

Get instant access and a $200 credit by signing up for a free Azure account.

Learn how to use Virtual Machine Scale Sets with 5-minute quickstart tutorials and documentation.

Enhance Virtual Machine Scale Sets with additional features and products, like security and backup services.

Documentation and resources

5-minute quickstarts

Learning modules

Resources

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Duncan McWilliam, Founder and Chief Executive Office at Outpost VFX

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“Azure provides the elasticity of compute that enables our clients to rapidly generate multiple high-resolution rock property realizations with Jason RockMod for detailed reservoir models.”

Joe Jacquot, Strategic Marketing Manager at CGG GeoSoftware

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It could have cost us millions of dollars to move our intellectual property without the support Microsoft provides. Our patented software represents a significant investment.

Steven Gittleson, Cofounder and Chief Executive Officer at LightSail

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