Amazon has Graviton-based ARM VMs that offer better price-performance than comparable x86-based VMs for some workloads. Early this week, Microsoft announced the preview of Azure VMs featuring the Ampere Altra Arm-based processor. Microsoft claims that these new VMs can deliver up to 50 percent better price-performance than comparable x86-based VMs.
The Dpsv5 and Epsv5 Azure VM-series feature the Ampere Altra Arm-based processor operating at up to 3.0GHz. You can configure these VMs up to 64 vCPUs and include VM sizes with 2GiB, 4GiB, and 8GiB per vCPU memory configurations, up to 40 Gbps networking, and optional SSD storage. The following operating systems are supported in these VMs:
- Available in preview: Canonical Ubuntu Linux, CentOS, and Windows 11 Professional and Enterprise Edition on Arm.
- Coming soon: Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, Debian, AlmaLinux, and Flatcar.
More than 120 applications, tools, languages, and databases are actively running on the Ampere-based Azure VM series.
“Microsoft’s preview of their new Ampere Altra Azure Virtual Machines will provide customers with a first-hand look at its leadership performance across cloud workloads of all types. We have seen rapid growth in the adoption of our Ampere Cloud Native Processors, and this further expands their global scale and availability. Not only do Ampere Altra processors deliver new levels of performance to the cloud, but they are also the efficient and sustainable choice.”—Jeff Wittich, Chief Product Officer Ampere
