According to the latest report, Azure virtual machines will now be able to run on ARM-based processors. Microsoft has confirmed that ARM CPUs, specifically those developed by Ampere, will now power multiple virtual machines, including web servers, open-source databases, game servers, media servers, and more.
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Microsoft is actively involving ARM CPUs in its ecosystem. After adopting almost every popular Linux distribution as the operating system for virtual machines, the Azure virtual machine platform is now embracing the ARM architecture from the hardware side.
Moreover, the Windows operating system maker has announced a “preview” release of ARM support on Azure virtual machines. The preview is initially available in the US West 2, US Midwest, and Europe West Azure regions, Ampere confirmed.
Ampere Computing, a startup focused on server-grade processors, announced last year that it had signed up Microsoft in the United States and Tencent Holdings in China as major customers. Hari Pulapaka, PM Director for Azure Host OS and Windows OS Platform, confirmed the preview release on Twitter.
Furthermore, “Ampere on Azure with Windows as the Root Host OS” indicates that Windows will be the base operating system running on the ARM CPU of the Ampere computer. But the virtual machine in the preview version currently supports Ubuntu, CentOS, and Windows 11 Professional and Enterprise editions, Windows 11 on ARM.
Additionally, Ampere Altra ARM CPUs for Azure should soon support more operating systems such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, Debian, AlmaLinux, and Flatcar.
Microsoft says Azure virtual machines powered by Ampere Altra ARM processors will be more than 50 percent more cost-effective in scaling workloads than comparable x86-based virtual machines. ARM CPUs may soon run some common virtual machines, including web servers, application servers, open-source databases, game servers, media servers, and more.
New virtual machines can be configured with up to 64 vCPUs, with the flexibility to choose virtual machine sizes of 2GiB, 4GiB, and 8GiB per vCPU memory configuration. They will have up to a 40Gbps network. Users will also be able to choose high-performance local SSD storage. The Dpsv5 and Epsv5 Azure virtual machine families will run on Ampere Altra ARM-based processors up to 3.0GHz.
