Microsoft has generally made Azure virtual machines (VMs) that use the Ampere Altra Arm architecture.
Enterprises can use Arm-based Azure VMs, already available in preview, to run large workloads at lower cost and through “cleaner” cloud operations. Think of rapidly expanding cloud-based workloads such as open source databases, Java and .NET applications, games, media, and web servers. ARM VMs were already previewed earlier this year.
Versions and Specifications
Virtual machines come in three versions. The Dpsv5 series available now has up to 64 VCPU cores per VM and between 4GB to 208GB of memory per CPU. The Dplsv5 series also features up to 64 vCPU cores per virtual machine and between 2 GB and 208 GB of memory. Epsv5 series has up to 32 vCPU cores per virtual machine and between 8 GB and 208 GB of memory.
Azure virtual machines use ARM-based Altra processors from the manufacturer Ampere. Additionally, Azure Arm VMs support up to 40 Gbps of network bandwidth, and feature premium SSDs and standard hard drives. Also, Ultra Disk Storage can be connected to VMs. Series VMs also have fast local SSD storage and support virtual machine scale clusters. Customers can monitor virtual machines and protect their data with Azure Monitor and Azure Backup.
Other support functions
Supported operating systems are preview versions of Windows 11 Pro and Windows 11 Enterprise. Linux distributions are also directly supported, such as Canonical Ubuntu, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), SUSE Enterprise Linux, CentOS, and Debian. Alma Linux and Rocky Linux will be added in the future.
Additionally, Azure Arm-based virtual machines are also available in preview for managed Kubernetes clusters. This is powered by the Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). This availability will be generally available in the coming weeks.
Virtual machines are now available in Azure regions of the US (US West 2, US West Central, US Central, US East, US East 2), Europe (Western Europe and Northern Europe), Asia (East Asia and Southeast Asia), and Australia (Eastern Australia). The number of regions will be expanded after September 1 this year.
advice: Microsoft introduces preview arm-based Azure VMs
