Updated: March 6, 2025 (July 19, 2021)
Charts & IllustrationsComparing Azure Generation 2 VM Capabilities
Azure generation 2 VMs offer larger processor, memory, and OS disk capacity than generation 1 VMs, but still do not offer all the benefits of on-premises Hyper-V generation 2 VMs.
Azure generation 2 VMs support firmware based on the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI), which offers faster boot times and supports security features not provided by the basic input/output system (BIOS) emulation of generation 1 VMs. Azure generation 2 VMs can support up to 12TB of memory (versus 1TB for generation 1), 240 virtual processors (versus 64 for generation 1), and OS disks larger than 2TB. This higher capacity can make Azure generation 2 VMs useful for memory- and processor-intensive workloads, such as large relational databases.
Trusted Launch, a set of capabilities currently in preview for Azure generation 2 VMs, provides a Virtual Trusted Platform Module (vTPM) compliant with the TPM 2.0 specification, which enables Secure Boot and virtualization-based security (VBS) capabilities.
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