Which Azure virtual machine types is most appropriate for testing and development?

Microsoft Azure offers many types of VM images in various sizes. Choosing the right VM image for your workload is an important factor for a successful Tableau Server deployment. You can choose from a wide range of Microsoft Azure VM images. For a complete list of all available VM image types and sizes, see Virtual Machine series(Link opens in a new window) at the Microsoft Azure website.

It is important to select an image that can run Tableau Server. The VM image must meet the Tableau Server hardware guidelines (a minimum of 8 cores and 64 GB of RAM). We recommend that you choose an instance that supports Azure premium storage(Link opens in a new window).

At minimum, a 64-bit Tableau Server requires a 4-core CPU (the equivalent of 8 Azure vCPUs) and 64 GB RAM. However, a total of 8 CPU cores (16 Azure vCPUs) and 64GB RAM are strongly recommended for a single production Microsoft Azure VM.

Typical VM types and sizes for development, test, and production environments

  • D Series – D13, D14, D16

  • DS Series – DS13, DS14

Note: We recommend that you use the DS series VMs with Premium Storage, which is best for database and other high performance applications. Typically, the D16s_v3 or DS13_V2 instances are a good choice. For testing and proof-of-concept purposes, you may find a virtual machine with only four cores acceptable (such as the DS13_V2).

Use two or three disks in RAID 0 configuration in order to get enough input/output operations per second (IOPS) on a single volume to provide high disk throughput. Two disks striped as a single volume provides good enough performance for an additional node not hosting repo. If you are running Tableau Server on a single computer, use three drives striped as a single volume (RAID 0) to provide enhanced disk performance, since more disk operations will happen on that computer.

Component/ResourceMicrosoft Azure

CPU

16 vCPU cores

Operating System

  • Tableau Server 2021.3.0 and later:

    • Windows Server 2016

    • Windows Server 2019

  • Earlier versions:

  • Tableau Server 2020.1.0 - 2021.2.x:

    • Windows Server 2012

    • Windows Server 2012 R2

    • Windows Server 2016

    • Windows Server 2019

  • Tableau Server 2019.1.0 - 2019.x:

    • Windows Server 2008 R2

    • Windows Server 2012

    • Windows Server 2012 R2

    • Windows Server 2016

    • Windows Server 2019

Memory

64+ GB RAM (4GB RAM per vCPU)

Storage

Two volumes:

30-50 GiB volume for the operating system

100 GiB or larger volume for Tableau Server

Storage type

Premium Storage P20 (512GB)++

For more information, see High-performance Premium Storage and managed disks for VMs(Link opens in a new window) at the Microsoft Azure website.

Disk latency

Less than or equal to 20ms as measured by the Avg. Transfer disk/sec Performance Counter in Windows.

In computing, a virtual machine is an emulation of a computer system. Virtual machines are based on computer architectures and provide the functionality of a physical computer. Their implementations may involve specialized hardware, software or both.

Microsoft Azure Virtual Machines

VM is basically a raw server that you get from your cloud provider. It's like your own personal computer, rather than purchasing it, you are renting it out on the cloud. When you are renting it out on the cloud, it is the same as if you are on your own computer. It's just a fresh piece of operating system, you can install as many software as you want, you can make it be a web server, application server etc. you can configure it to be anything.

You need to create some resources i.e. Network, disk etc. for the VM. These resources can be in different resource groups. On Microsoft Azure Virtual Machines, cloud users have different options to deploy VM using GUI portal, Powershell, using portal's cloud shell. You can see all the deployed VM's in Azure portal. Before deploying the VM using any method i.e. Powershell, GUI. users should have knowledge about different flavour of VM in the cloud. In this article we will explain all about Azure VMs.

If you compare it with AWS, which is also a popular cloud computing service; with AWS, this same service is called EC2, in Azure it's called VM.

Azure VM tier Basic vs Standard

There are two tiers in Azure VM

Basic – Optimized for development and testing, they are just like standard tier but do not support Load Balancer or auto-scaling, IOPS is slower as compared to standard tier.

Standard – This tier provides better compute, memory and IOPS as compared to standard tier.

Basic tier is available in older generation Microsoft VM's. Microsoft is still supporting the Older Generation, but they do not recommend using older generation VM's. Basic tier is only available in A0 to A4 instances.

Microsoft Azure Virtual Machine Basic Tier Example

If a user is deploying a domain controller for a small or medium size business, he should opt for basic Tier A2 (2 vCPU's and 3.5GB memory) as there is no need of load balancer with domain controller, and not looking for a high IOPS. DC's have relatively light workload as compare to other servers.

Azure VM Series

Users may select from a range of predefined configuration options that correspond to different VM sizes. The VM size determines characteristics such as:

  • Speed
  • Memory
  • Data Disk can attach to it
  • Size of temporary disk

A Series (For Development or Testing)

A-series VMs have CPU performance and memory configurations best suited for entry level workloads like development and test. They are economical and provide a low-cost option to get started.

Example Workloads for A series

  • Development
  • Testing
  • Low traffic Web Servers
  • Server for proof of concept
  • Code Repositories

Starting Price of A series

$14.60 /per month

  • Intel Xenon
  • 1 vCPU
  • 0.75 GB RAM

B-Series (For workloads that do not need continuous CPU performance)

Economical burstable VMs. B-series are economical VMs that provide a low-cost option for workloads that typically run at a low to moderate baseline CPU utilization, but sometimes need to burst to significantly higher CPU utilization when the demand rises. B-series support premium storage but do not support premium storage cashing.

Example Workloads for B series

  • Build Servers
  • Small databases
  • Micro services

Starting Price of B series

$4.38 /per month

  • Intel Xenon
  • 1 vCPU
  • 0.5 GB RAM

D Series Family (For General purpose needs)

The D-series Microsoft Azure Virtual Machines offer a combination of vCPUs, memory, and temporary storage able to meet the requirements associated with most production workloads.

The D v3 VMs are hyper-threaded general-purpose VMs based on the 2.3 GHz Intel® XEON ® E5-2673 v4 (Broadwell) processor. They can achieve 3.5 GHz with Intel Turbo Boost Technology 2.0.

The D v4 and Dd v4 VMs are based on a custom Intel® Xeon® Platinum 8272CL processor, which runs at a base speed of 2.5Ghz and can achieve up to 3.4Ghz all core turbo frequency. The Dd v4 VM sizes feature fast, large local SSD storage (up to 2,400 GiB) and are well suited for applications that benefit from low latency, high-speed local storage. The D v4 VM sizes do not have any temporary storage.

The Da v4 and Das v4 VM-series provide up to 96 vCPUs, 384 GiBs of RAM and 2,400 GiBs of SSD-based temporary storage and feature the AMD EPYC™ 7452 processor.

 

The Ds-series, Dds-series, and the Das-series VMs both support Premium SSDs and Ultra Disk storage depending on regional availability.

Example Workloads for D series

  • Enterprise grade applications
  • Relational Databases
  • In-memory caching
  • Analytics
  • Applications that demand faster CPU’s, IOPs and memory

Starting Price of D series

$49.57 /per month

  • Intel Xenon
  • 1 vCpu
  • 3.5 GB RAM

DC-series (For confidential data)

DC-series VMs protect the confidentiality and integrity of your data and code while it's processed in Azure using secure enclaves. This is in addition to the existing built-in encryption capabilities that protect data while it's at rest and in transit.

These VMs are backed by the latest generation of Intel Xeon E-2176G 3.7GHz Processor with SGX technology. With Intel Turbo Boost Technology this processor can reach up to 4.7GHz.

Example Workloads for DC series

  • Confidential querying in Database
  • Scalable confidential consortium networks
  • Multiparty machine learning algorithms
  • Protection of code and data while it is in use

Starting Price of DC series

$187.61 /per month

  • Intel Xenon with SGX technology
  • 1 vCPU
  • 4 GB RAM

E-Series (For high memory needs)

The E-series Microsoft Azure Virtual Machines are optimized for heavy in-memory applications such as SAP HANA. These VMs are configured with high memory-to-core ratios, which makes them well-suited for relational database servers, with medium to large caches, and in-memory analytics.

The Ev3-series VMs range from 2 to 64 vCPUs and 16-432 GiB of RAM, respectively.

The E v4 and Ed v4 VMs are based on a custom Intel® Xeon® Platinum 8272CL processor, which runs at a base speed of 2.5Ghz and can achieve up to 3.4Ghz all core turbo frequency. The E and Ed v4 VM sizes feature up to 504 GiB of RAM and are ideal for memory-intensive enterprise applications. The Ed v4 also include a fast and large local SSD storage (up to 2,400 GiB) making them well suited for applications that benefit from low latency, high-speed local storage. The E v4 VM sizes do not have any temporary storage.

The Ea v4 and Eas v4 VM-series feature the AMD EPYC™ 7452 processor and provide up to 96 vCPUs, 672 GiBs of RAM and 2,400 GiBs of SSD-based temporary storage.

The Es, Eds and the Eas VM series both support Premium SSDs and Ultra Disk storage depending on regional availability.

Example Workloads for E series

  • SAP HANA
  • SAP S/4 HANA application layer
  • SAP NetWeaver application layer
  • SQL Hekaton

Starting Price of E series

$110.96 /per month

  • Intel Xenon Platinum
  • 2 vCPUs
  • 16 GB RAM

F-Series (Compute Optimized)

F-series VMs feature a higher CPU-to-memory ratio. They are equipped with 2 GB RAM and 16 GB of local solid-state drive (SSD) per CPU core, and are optimized for compute intensive workloads.

The Fsv2-series features 2 GiB RAM and 8 GB of local temporary storage (SSD) per vCPU. The Fsv2-series is hyper-threaded and based on the 2.7 GHz Intel Xeon® Platinum 8168 (SkyLake) processor, which can achieve clock speeds as high as 3.7 GHz with the Intel Turbo Boost Technology 2.0.

Example Workloads for F series

  • Batch processing
  • Web Servers
  • Analytics
  • Gaming

Starting Price of F series

$70.81 /per month

  • Intel Xenon Platinum
  • 2 vCPUs
  • 4 GB RAM

G-Series (Memory and Storage Optimized)

G-series VMs feature the Intel® Xeon® processor E5 v3 family, two times more memory, and four times more Solid-State Drive storage (SSDs) than the General-Purpose D-series. G-series features up to ½ TB of RAM and 32 CPU cores, and provide unparalleled computational performance, memory, and local SSD storage for your most demanding applications.

Example Workloads for G series

  • Large SQL
  • ERP
  • Data warehousing solutions

Starting Price of G series

$511.00 /per month

  • Intel Xenon Platinum
  • 2 vCPUs
  • 28 GB RAM

H-Series (High performance compute VMs)

The HB-series Microsoft Azure Virtual Machines are optimized for HPC applications driven by memory bandwidth, such as fluid dynamics, explicit finite element analysis, and weather modeling. HB VMs feature 60 AMD EPYC 7551 processor cores, 4 GB of RAM per CPU core, no hyperthreading, and up to 4 Managed Disks. The AMD EPYC platform provides more than 260 GB/sec of memory bandwidth.

The HC-series VMs are optimized for HPC applications driven by intensive computation, such as implicit finite element analysis, reservoir simulation, and computational chemistry. HC VMs feature 44 Intel Xeon Platinum 8168 processor cores, 8 GB of RAM per CPU core, no hyperthreading, and up to 4 Managed Disks. The Intel Xeon Platinum platform supports Intel's rich ecosystem of software tools and features an all-cores clock speed of 3.4 GHz for most workloads.

Example Workloads for H series

  • Fluid dynamics
  • Finite element analysis
  • Seismic processing
  • Reservoir simulation
  • Risk analysis
  • Electronic design automation
  • Rendering
  • Spark
  • Weather modeling
  • Quantum simulation
  • Computational chemistry
  • Heat transfer simulation

Starting Price of H series

$753.36 /per month

  • AMD EPYC
  • 8 vCPUs
  • 56 GB RAM

Ls-Series (High throughput, low latency, directly mapped to local NVMe storage)

The Lsv2 VMs run on the AMD EPYC™ 7551 processor with an all core boost of 2.55GHZ up to a 3.0GHz single core boost. The Lsv2 series VMs offer up to 80 vCPUs in a hyper-threaded configuration, with 8 GiB of memory per vCPU and up to 19.2TB (10x1.92TB) available directly to the VM.

The Ls-series VMs are storage optimized. These are ideal for applications requiring low latency, high throughput, and large local disk storage. These VMs are built on Intel Haswell processor technology, specifically E5 Xeon v3 processors with 4, 8, 16, and 32 core VM sizes. Ls-series VMs support up to 6 TB of local SSD and offer unmatched storage I/O performance.

Example Workloads for Ls series

  • NoSQL databases such as Cassandra
  • Data warehousing applications
  • Large transactional databases
  • MongoDB
  • Cloudera
  • Redis

Starting Price of Ls series

$543.12 /per month

  • AMD EPYC
  • 8 vCPUs
  • 64 GB RAM

M-Series (Memory optimized)

The M-series family of Microsoft Azure Virtual Machines are memory optimized and are ideal for heavy in-memory workloads. The M-Series offer up to 4 TB of RAM on a single VM. In addition, these VMs offer a virtual CPU count of up to 128 vCPUs on a single VM to enable high performance parallel processing.

Example Workloads for M series

  • SAP HANA
  • SAP S/4 HANA
  • SQL Hekaton

Starting Price of M series

$1,570.30 /per month

  • Intel Xenon Platinum
  • 4 vCPUs
  • 218.75 GB RAM

Mv2-Series (Largest memory optimized virtual machines)

The Mv2-series VMs are hyper-threaded and feature Intel® Xeon® Platinum 8180M 2.5GHz (Skylake) processors, offering up to 416 vCPU on a single VM and offer 3TB, 6 TB and 12 TB memory configurations. This is by far the largest-memory VM offered and provide unparalleled computational performance to support large in-memory databases.

Example Workloads for Mv2 series

  • SAP HANA
  • SAP S/4 HANA
  • SQL Hekaton

Starting Price of Mv2 series

$19543.56 /per month

  • Intel Xenon Platinum
  • 208 vCPUs
  • 2850 GB RAM

N-Series (GPU enabled virtual machines)

The N-series is a family of VMs with GPU capabilities. GPUs are ideal for compute and graphics-intensive workloads, helping customers to fuel innovation through scenarios like high-end remote visualization, deep learning, and predictive analytics.

The N-series has three different offerings aimed at specific workloads:

The NC-series is focused on high-performance computing and machine learning workloads. The latest version NCsv3 features NVIDIA's Tesla V100 GPU.

The NDs-series is focused on training and inference scenarios for deep learning. It uses the NVIDIA Tesla P40 GPUs. The latest version - NDv2 - features the NVIDIA Tesla V100 GPUs.

The NV-series enables powerful remote visualization workloads and other graphics-intensive applications backed by the NVIDIA Tesla M60 GPU.

NCsv3, NCsv2, NC and NDs VMs offer optional InfiniBand interconnect to enable scale-up performance.

Example Workloads for N series

  • Simulation
  • Deep learning
  • Graphic rendering
  • Video editing
  • Gaming
  • Remote visualization

Starting Price of N series

$480.34 /per month

  • Intel Xenon Platinum
  • NVIDIA Tesla P100GPU
  • 4 vCPUs
  • 28 GB RAM

Microsoft Azure Virtual Machine Service Level Agreement

The Service Level Agreement Microsoft is providing for virtual machines is explained below:

Number of VM’s Instances

Disk Type

Availability Set

Availability Zone

SLA

Single

HDD

N/A

N/A

95%

Single

Standard SSD

N/A

N/A

99.5%

Single

Premium SSD

N/A

N/A

99.9%

Single

Ultra-Disk

N/A

N/A

99.9%

Multiple

N/A

N/A

2 or more

99.99%

Multiple

N/A

2 or more

N/A

99.95%

Discounts on Microsoft Azure Virtual Machines

You can get different types of discounts on VM's. These discounts have some prerequisite, all of them are explained below.

Promo VMs

  • Promo VMs use the same hardware as the non-promo VMs
  • The promo VMs are available for a limited time and offer a reduced price.
  • Promo VMs offer discounted prices.
  • Discounted prices vary when Microsoft offer promo VMs
  • Currently Microsoft is offering 40% - 56% discount on NCv1, NVv1 and Hv1VMs

Reserved Instance Discounts

  • Reserved instances are advanced purchase of Microsoft Azure Virtual Machines for one or three years.
  • The customer will get discount of up to 72 percent as compared to pay as you go option.
  • Reserved instance only covers compute costs not the software, storage and other charges.
  • The customer has two options to pay: Up front for the reserved instance OR Pay monthly.
  • VM instances are flexible and easily exchanged or returned.

Reserved Instance discount range based on Windows OS in East US region. Discount percentage vary on different VM sizes.

1 Year Reserved

3 Year Reserved

19-55%

31-72%

Example of Reserved Instance

Instance

OS

PAYG

1 Year Reserved

3 Year Reserved

D2 v3

Windows

$0.192/hour

$0.15/hour (~22%)

$0.13/hour (~33%)

D2 v3

Linux

$0.10/hour

$0.058/hour (~42%)

$0.038/hour (~63%)

Ev3

Windows

$0.218/hour

$0.1673

 

(~24%)

$0.1401

 

(~33%)

E64 v3

Windows

$6.573/hour

$5.3026/hour (~19%)

$4.4523/hour (~32%)

M8-2ms

Windows

$2.1069/hour

$1.2516/hour (~41%)

$0.7979/hour (~62%)

M8-2ms

Linux

$1.5365/hour

$0.8836/hour (~42%)

$0.4299/hour (~72%)

Spot Instance

  • Spot instance are basically cost saving option to deploy VM in cloud.
  • You can get up to 90% discount as compared to pay as you go.
  • B series and Promo VM’s are not supported.
  • Actual discounts may vary based on region, Microsoft Azure Virtual Machines type, and compute capacity available when the workload is deployed.
  • You can deploy your noncritical load using spot instance. When there is unused capacity on azure infrastructure the VM will works fine in the cloud otherwise if there is no capacity available the VM will be deallocated automatically.
  • Like the standard instances the price is not fixed for spot instance.

Example of Spot Instance

Instance

PAYG Price

Spot Instance Price

Discount

A1 v2

$0.065/hour

$0.0225/hour

~65%

F2s v2

$0.163/hour

$0.0376/hour

~77%

D2 v3

$0.188/hour

$0.0880/hour

~53%

E2 v3

$0.218/hour

$0.1295/hour

~41%

D2d v4

$0.205/hour

$0.0841/hour

~59%

Hybrid Benefits

Hybrid benefit is another cost saving option which let you bring your existing Windows Server or SQL licenses to the Azure cloud and you can save up to 85 percent compared to standard instance.

Example of Hybrid Benefits

Instance

PAYG Price

Hybrid Benefits

Discount

A1 v2

$0.065/hour

$0.043/hour

~34%

F2s v2

$0.163/hour

$0.0846/hour

~49%

D2 v3

$0.188/hour

$0.096/hour  

~49%

E2 v3

$0.218/hour

$0.126/hour  

~43%

D2d v4

$0.205/hour

$0.113/hour  

~36%

Linux vs Windows VM Pricing

  • Microsoft VM Pricing always divided into two parts: Microsoft Azure Virtual Machines Compute and Operating System License fee.
  • Some flavors of Linux OS have no license fee i.e. Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora and you will only be charged for compute on Azure Cloud.
  • If you need support and vendors accountability the Linux OS options are Red Hat and SUSE but as you are getting support and vendors accountability so there is license fee associated with the VM using their flavors in Azure Cloud.
  • Likewise, Windows Operating System incurs licensing cost.

Example of VM Licensing Cost

Instance

Windows OS

RedHat

Ubuntu

A1 v2

$0.065/hour

$0.133/hour

$0.043/hour

F2s v2

$0.163/hour

$0.1746/hour

$0.0846/hour

D2 v3

$0.188/hour

$0.186/hour

$0.096/hour

E2 v3

$0.218/hour

$0.216/hour

$0.126/hour

D2d v4

$0.205/hour

$0.203/hour

$0.113/hour

What are the types of virtual machines in Azure?

Azure Virtual Machine Types.
General purpose VMs. ... .
Compute optimized VMs. ... .
Memory optimized VMs. ... .
Storage optimized VMs. ... .
VMs for Graphics Processing (GPUs) ... .
High performance compute..

What type of work would be the most suitable for deployment on Azure virtual machines?

Expert-Verified Answer. Microsoft provides Azure Virtual Machines for developing the applications. Every Virtual Machine i.e. balanced CPU to the memory ratio is used for general purpose. These machines are used for running in workloads i.e. graphics, video editing.

Which Azure VM should I use?

If you need tons of computational power for lots of apps or a large app, the H-series instances are what you need. The L series Azure instances are best when you need high performance in a large instance but with much faster storage IO. The L-series VMs include directly mapped NVMe storage.

What is D and E series in Azure?

The D-series Azure VMs offer a combination of vCPUs, memory, and temporary storage able to meet the requirements associated with most production workloads. The Dv3 virtual machines are hyper-threaded general-purpose VMs based on the 2.3 GHz Intel® XEON ® E5-2673 v4 (Broadwell) processor.