Microsoft introduced a preview of Arm-based virtual machines (VMs) for Azure. The tech giant aims to further expand its offering of cloud-native computing power.
The Azure VMs are based on Ampere Computing’s Altra Arm server processors. According to the tech giant, the Arm-based Azure VM’s should provide up to 50 percent more price-performance than traditional x86-based VM’s.
The Altera processors deliver a clock speed of 3 GHz. In addition, the series features up to 64 vCPUs and 2 GiB, 4 GiB and 8 GiB size per vCPU memory configuration. Furthermore, the Azure VM’s have up to 40 Gbps of networking and optional high-performance local SSD storage.
The Azure VM’s will initially support Canonical Ubuntu Linux, CentOS and Windows 11 Professional and Enterprise. Support for other Linux distributions follows shortly, including RHEL, Suse Linux Enterprise Server, Debian, AlmaLinux and Flatcar.
Suitable for complex workloads and apps
Arm-based Azure VM’s allow developers to run extensive workloads, web servers, application servers and open-source databases.
The preview of the Ampere Altra Azure VM’s is now available to all Western European regions and some US regions. If you’re interested in accessing the preview, contacting Microsoft is the way to go.
7 hours ago
