Selecting the Correct Azure VM

Wes Miller analyzes and writes about Microsoft’s security, identity management, and systems management technologies. Before joining Directions on Microsoft, Wes... more

The Azure Virtual Machines (VMs) service allows organizations to run Windows Server and Linux workloads on VMs in Azure, using a pay-as-you-go pricing model for each minute a VM is running. Azure offers numerous VM families, each with predefined processor core, RAM, storage, and networking architectures, and a range of predefined VM sizes within those families. The offerings range significantly in terms of price, performance, and regional availability, so organizations have to match application requirements with the most appropriate VM family and size to properly balance cost and performance.

VM Family Defines Performance Parameters

Currently, Azure VM families can be classified in the following six categories, with one or more families available in each category:

General purpose VMs
Compute-optimized VMs
High-performance compute-optimized VMs
Memory-optimized VMs
Local storage-optimized VMs
GPU-enabled VMs.

Within each category, each family is generally defined by a common hardware platform designed to meet specific performance requirements. Organizations need to understand both the design intent of each VM family offered by Azure and the specific performance objectives of the family’s workload to make the correct choices for the applications they intend to run on Azure VMs.

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