UPDATED 21:23 EST / NOVEMBER 27 2016

CLOUD

Microsoft fine tunes its Azure A-Series virtual machine instances

Microsoft Corp. last week introduced a bunch of new virtual machine instances on its Azure public cloud.

The new VMs aren’t a completely new type, but rather a new set of options for its existing A-Series VMs, which are usually used by developers for various workloads. The new versions of Microsoft’s A-Series VMs are more powerful, with increases in their RAM per vCPU ratio and faster storage speeds. What it really means is that Microsoft has turbocharged its basic instances.

With the update, Microsoft says the new A-Series VMs provide local disk random IOPS, which is a measure of how fast they can write to disk, that are 2-10 times faster than the existing A-Series. Meanwhile the RAM per vCPU has increased from 1.75 GiB or 7 GiB to 2 GiB or 8 GiB. Microsoft has also renamed the various A-Series VM options according to their new specifications.

Beck said the A_v2-Series is now available in most Azure regions, and will be available in all regions shortly. He didn’t mention which regions currently have access to the new options so customers will just have to take a look and see if or when they come available.

Microsoft hasn’t indicated any price increases, which means customers are getting a little extra oomph for free. Microsoft made the move as its main cloud rival, Amazon Web Services, gears up for its annual re:Invent conference in Las Vegas this week.


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