Back in April of this year, Microsoft confirmed that Azure virtual machines (VMs) would be able to run on ARM CPU-based processors. Microsoft now says that ARM-based VMs on Azure are fully available this week (starting September 1).
Since April, Microsoft has been testing the ARM architecture to support its Azure VM virtual machines. Microsoft is offering a “preview” version of ARM support on Azure VMs. Microsoft claims that “hundreds” of customers have been testing ARM-based Azure VM virtual machines.
The new Azure ARM-based VMs are available in the following configurations.
Dpsv5 Series with up to 64 vCPUs and 4 GiB of memory, up to 208 GiBs per vCPU
Dplsv5 Series with up to 64 vCPUs and 2 GiB of memory, up to 128 GiBs per vCPU
Epsv5 Series, up to 32 vCPUs and 8 GiB of memory, up to 208 GiBs per vCPU
These VMs will support up to 40Gbps network bandwidth; standard SSDs, standard HDDs, advanced SSDs and hyperdisk storage can be attached to the VMs. Azure Monitor and Azure Backup will help monitor data health and VM performance parameters.
The aforementioned ARM-powered Azure VMs will now move into “universal availability”. Going forward, Azure VMs with Ampere Altra ARM processors will be available in “10 Azure regions and multiple availability zones worldwide”.
These will be available to users in the US (US West 2, US Midwest, US Central, US East, US East 2); Europe (Western Europe, Northern Europe); Asia (East Asia, Southeast Asia) and Australia (Eastern Australia). Microsoft has pledged to add several more regions after Sept. 1.
Microsoft confirmed that during the trial phase, developers and Web administrators are using VM for Web and application servers, open source databases, microservices, Java and .NET applications, games and media servers. In addition to these platforms, ARM-based VMs can also be included in Kubernetes clusters, and Azure Kubernetes Services (AKS) can and will accept new VMs.
Azure VMs powered by ARM CPUs can reliably run Windows 11 ARM Professional and Enterprise editions. In addition, these processors support a wide range of popular Linux distributions. In addition to Ubuntu, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Enterprise Linux, CentOS and Debian, Microsoft will gradually add support for Alma Linux and Rocky Linux.
