The General Purpose Dpsv5 and Dplsv5 and Memory Optimized Epsv5 pricing tiers for Microsoft Azure Virtual Machines (VMs) brings the ability to host Virtual Machine using Arm-based CPUs in the Microsoft Azure cloud. It’s been a few years since I first wrote about Microsoft working on bringing ARM CPUs to Microsoft Azure with Project Olympus 2 back in 2017. Finally, the time has come that Microsoft is now releasing General Availability of these Arm-based VM pricing tiers.

The following is the list of Azure Arm-based Virtual Machine:

  • General Purpose
    • Dpsv5 series – up to 64 vCPUs and 4GiBs memory per vCPU up to 208 GiBs
    • Dplsv5 series – up to 64 vCPUs and 2GiBs memory per vCPU up to 128 GiBs
  • Memory Optimized
    • Epsv5 series – up to 32 vCPUs and 8GiBs memory per vCPU up to 208 GiBs

When provisioning an Azure Virtual Machine, the Image used to provision the VM must also support deploying to an Arm-based VM. When the VM Image chosen for a new VM, the Azure Portal will enable the ability to select the VM architecture of Arm64. Once doing so, the Arm-based VM Sizes / Pricing Tiers will be available for selection.

The following screenshot shows what the Azure Portal looks like with a Arm64 architecture supported VM Image selected allowing the selection of an Arm-based VM Size. The “See all sizes” option when selecting the VM Size will open up a larger UI to select the Arm-based Size out of the many sizes offered within the new D-series v5 and E-series v5 Arm-based options.

Screenshot: Azure Portal showing provisioning a VM using Arm-based VM Size pricing tiers
Screenshot: Azure Portal showing provisioning a VM using Arm-based VM Size pricing tiers

Azure provides a choice of x64 or Arm64-based virtual machines to run your applications. x64-based VMs provide the most software compatibility while Arm64-based VMs provide up to 50% better price-performance than comparable x64 VMs. Arm64-based VMs also help developers build Arm-compatible software without cross-compilation.

Azure Portal info about VM architecture selection

The General Availability announcement from Microsoft on the new Arm-based series explains a bit more details about what is available with this new offering.

Chris Pietschmann is a Microsoft MVP, HashiCorp Ambassador, and Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT) with 20+ years of experience designing and building Cloud & Enterprise systems. He has worked with companies of all sizes from startups to large enterprises. He has a passion for technology and sharing what he learns with others to help enable them to learn faster and be more productive.
Microsoft MVP HashiCorp Ambassador

Discover more from Build5Nines

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading