Microsoft Azure has launched two new sets of virtual machines

Last week, Microsoft Azure launched two new series of virtual machines, the D_v3 and the E_v3 which are follow-ups to the D_v2-Series. This launch introduces new sizes that use Hyper-Threading Technology (running on Intel Broadwell E5-2673 v4 2.3GHz processor, and the Intel® Haswell 2.4 GHz E5-2673 v3), shifting from physical cores to virtual CPU's (vCPU). They will also be priced 28% lower than their predecessors. Microsoft says that this shift is an 'important architectural change' that will allow the company to support larger VM sizes, helping them to 'unlock more power from underlying hardware' and therefore deliver better performance, efficiency and cost-savings. The new virtual machines will be the first to run on Windows Server 2016 hosts. This enables Nested Virtualisation and Hyper- V containers for the new Dv3 and Ev3 sizes, (Nest Virtualisation allows you to run a Hyper-V server on an Azure virtual machine). Prices in the example shown below are in $ (hourly), based on Linux instances (CentOs or Ubuntu) running in Europe West Region: Read Microsoft's blog on the new Virtual Machines here. If you'd like to learn more about how you can save with Azure instances, please contact us here.