Microsoft Corp. today announced that Arm-based virtual machines are now ready for prime time on the Azure cloud platform, following a preview that launched in April.

The company explained that the Arm VMs, which are essentially software-based computers, will become generally available on Sept. 1 across 10 of its global Azure regions. They include five in the U.S., two in Europe, two in Asia and one in Australia.

Moreover, customers will now have the ability to use Arm-based instances in Kubernetes clusters through the Azure Kubernetes Service. That capability will launch in preview in the coming weeks in the same Azure regions.

When they were launched in preview back in April, Microsoft explained that the D-Series and E-Series VMs are powered by Ampere Computing LLC’s Arm-based Altra server chips, which are designed for scale-out, or spreading workloads across more servers, and cloud-native applications. At the time, Microsoft said the VMs would provide up to 50% better price-performance than comparable instances powered by x86-based chips.

Arm-based processors such as Ampere’s Altra chips and Amazon Web Services Inc.’s Graviton silicon are becoming more popular in the cloud server market as enterprises seek greater performance and lower energy use. It’s a worry for companies such as Intel Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc., which sell x86-based chips that carry out the bulk of today’s cloud data processing work. For now, Arm-based chips account for only a minority of cloud-based server workloads, but they are said to be slowly gaining popularity.

Microsoft Vice President of Azure Compute Platform Paul Nash said in a blog post that customers are looking to “maximize operational efficiency and are taking a holistic approach across their application portfolios.” During the preview, hundreds of customers evaluated the Arm-based hardware for various workloads, Nash said, including web and application servers, open-source databases, Java and .NET applications, microservices, gaming and media servers.

Microsoft added that while the preview was up and running, it also worked closely with open-source software providers to ensure the Arm VMs support a number of Linux distributions. These include Ubuntu, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Enterprise Linux, CentOS and Debian. Support for Alma Linux and Rocky Linux is also on the way, Microsoft said.

Microsoft said the D-Series VMs are general-purpose, while the E-Series is memory-optimized. For instance, the Dpsv5 series VMs can support up to 64 virtual central processing units with up to 208 gigabytes of memory each. Meanwhile the Epsv5 series can only support up to 32 vCPUs, but with a maximum of 208 gigabytes of memory per vCPU. The VMs will be provided with up to 40 gigabytes per second of networking bandwidth, and customers can choose from Standard solid-state storage or hard-drive storage, Premium SSDs and Ultra Disk Storage options.

Photo: Microsoft