This blog post series highlights the key announcements and major updates related to Azure Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Azure Local, as officially released by Microsoft in the past two weeks.
Azure
General
Msv3 and Mdsv3 Series Now Available on ItalyNorth
The Msv3 and Mdsv3 High Memory (HM) Virtual Machine (VM) series are now available in the ItalyNorth region. These VMs represent the next generation of memory-optimized sizes, offering significant advancements in performance, cost efficiency, and resilience compared to their predecessors, the Mv2-series VMs. The Mv3 HM series supports configurations with memory ranging from 6TB to an impressive 16TB. These VMs deliver up to 8,000 MBps throughput to remote storage and provide up to 25% improvements in networking performance over earlier generations, making them an excellent choice for memory-intensive workloads.
ND H100 v5 GPU-Powered VM Now Available on ItalyNorth
Azure has introduced the ND H100 v5 series virtual machines (VMs) in the ItalyNorth region, expanding its portfolio of GPU-powered instances. This flagship series is engineered for demanding deep learning training and generative AI workloads, as well as high-performance computing (HPC) applications. The ND H100 v5 series starts with a single VM containing eight NVIDIA H100 Tensor Core GPUs and can scale to deployments involving thousands of GPUs. Each VM offers 3.2 Tbps of interconnect bandwidth and a dedicated 400 Gb/s NVIDIA Quantum-2 CX7 InfiniBand connection for each GPU, ensuring optimized performance. These VMs feature NVLINK 4.0 for intra-VM communication and are powered by 96 physical fourth Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processor cores. Designed to integrate seamlessly with AI and ML frameworks like TensorFlow, PyTorch, and RAPIDS, as well as HPC tools leveraging NVIDIA’s NCCL communication libraries, the ND H100 v5 series provides unparalleled scalability and performance for AI-driven innovations.
Storage
Azure NetApp Files Enhances Minimum Volume Size to 50 GiB
Azure NetApp Files now supports a minimum volume size of 50 GiB, reducing the previous limit of 100 GiB. This improvement caters to workloads requiring smaller volumes, such as Kubernetes, allowing customers to optimize storage volumes more effectively. By right-sizing volumes in the range of 50 GiB to 100 GiB, organizations can achieve cost savings and maximize capacity pool utilization. The feature is accessible across all Azure NetApp Files-enabled regions, further broadening its usability for diverse storage needs.
Azure Files Introduces Provisioned v2 Billing Model for HDD (Standard)
The provisioned v2 billing model for Azure Files HDD (standard) is now generally available, offering customers greater control and predictability in managing their storage costs. This model allows independent provisioning of storage, IOPS, and throughput, ensuring alignment with specific performance requirements. With enhanced scalability and performance, customers can configure file shares up to 256 TiB, with 50,000 IOPS and 5 GiB/sec of throughput. Additionally, provisioned v2 enables per-share monitoring for better resource management. Currently, this feature is available in select Azure regions, making it a versatile option for businesses with varying storage needs.
Conclusion
Over the past two weeks, Microsoft has introduced a slew of updates and announcements pertaining to Azure Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Azure Stack. These developments underscore the tech giant’s unwavering commitment to enhancing its cloud offerings and adapting to the ever-evolving needs of businesses and developers. Users of Azure can anticipate improved functionalities, streamlined services, and enriched features as a result of these changes. Stay tuned for more insights as I continue to monitor and report on Azure’s progression in the cloud sphere.
