Microsoft opens Azure Cobalt 100 virtual machines in preview

2024-05-21 · Publisher : Microsoft · Domain : Cloud & DevOps

Microsoft launches the first Azure virtual machines on Cobalt 100, its in-house Arm processor, in preview. Three series (Dpsv6, Dplsv6, Epsv6) up to 96 vCPUs, with up to 1.4x the CPU performance of previous Arm VMs.

### Background On 21 May 2024, Microsoft announces the preview of new Azure virtual machines based on Cobalt 100, its in-house Arm processor. The processor uses the Arm Neoverse N2 design, optimized for scale-out cloud applications. The preview covers three series: the general-purpose Dpsv6 and Dplsv6 VMs, and the memory-optimized Epsv6 VMs. They are free during the preview; only associated resources (disks, for example) are billed. ### Key facts - Dpsv6: up to 96 vCPUs and 384 GiB of RAM (4:1 memory-to-vCPU ratio); Dplsv6: up to 96 vCPUs and 192 GiB (2:1); Epsv6: up to 96 vCPUs and 672 GiB (up to 8:1). - According to Microsoft: up to 1.4x CPU performance, 1.5x on Java workloads and 2x on web servers, .NET applications and in-memory caches, compared with the previous generation of Azure Arm VMs. - Four times more IOPS on local NVMe storage and up to 1.5x more network bandwidth. - Preview regions: Central US, East US, East US 2, North Europe, Southeast Asia, West Europe and West US 2. - Deployment through the usual Azure methods: portal, SDKs, APIs, PowerShell and command-line interface. ### Why it matters For teams running containerized workloads on Azure Kubernetes Service or open-source databases, this is a first Arm option with an in-house processor, to be tested in pre-production. The announced gains are the vendor's own: only a measurement on the real workload shows whether cost per request falls. The Dpsv6 and Dplsv6 series suit containerized workloads, testing and CI/CD pipelines on Arm. ### Takeaway Microsoft joins AWS (Graviton) and Google (Axion) with an in-house Arm processor; general availability follows in October 2024.

Tags : Azure, Puces, Hyperscaler, Cloud