Sizes for virtual machines in Azure

Applies to: ✔️ Linux VMs ✔️ Windows VMs ✔️ Flexible scale sets ✔️ Uniform scale sets

Azure Virtual Machine (VM) sizes are designed to provide a wide range of options for hosting your servers and their workloads in the cloud. Sizes are categorized into different families and types, each optimized for specific purposes. Users can choose the most suitable VM size based on their requirements, such as CPU, memory, storage, and network bandwidth.

This article describes what sizes are, gives an overview of the available sizes and shows different options for Azure virtual machine instances you can use to run your apps and workloads.

VM size and series naming

Azure VM sizes follow specific naming conventions to denote varying features and specifications. Each character in the name represents different aspects of the VM. These include the VM family, number of vCPUs, and extra features like premium storage or included accelerators.

VM naming is further broken down into the 'Series' name and the 'Size' name. Size names include extra characters representing the number of vCPUs, type of storage, etc.

Category Description Links
Type Basic categorization by intended workload. General purpose
Compute optimized
Memory optimized
Storage optimized
GPU accelerated
FPGA accelerated
Series Group of sizes with similar hardware and features. Enter the 'Series' tab here.
Size Specific VM configuration, including vCPUs, memory, and accelerators. Enter the 'Size' tab here.

Name structure breakdown

Here's a breakdown of a 'General purpose, DCads_v5-series' size series.

Graphic showing a breakdown of the DCadsv5 VM size series with text describing each letter and section of the name. 1 Most families are represented using one letter, but others such as GPU sizes (NV-series, etc.) use two.
2 Most subfamilies are represented with a single upper case letter, but others (such as Ebsv5-series) are still considered subfamilies of their parent family due to feature differences.
3 If no feature letter for a CPU is listed, the series uses Intel x86-64 CPUs. If the CPU is AMD, it's listed as a. If the CPU is ARM based (Microsoft Cobalt or Ampere Altra), it's listed as p.
4 There can be any number of extra features in a size name. There could be none (Dv5-series) or there could be three (Dplds_v6-series).
5 Version numbers only appear in the size name if there are multiple versions of the same series. If you're using the first version of a series (HB-series, B-series, etc.) it's often not included in the size name.

Note

Not all sizes will have subfamilies, support accelerators, or specify the CPU vendor. For more information on VM size naming conventions, see Azure VM sizes naming conventions.

List of VM size families by type

This section contains a list of all current generation size series with tabs dedicated to each size family. Each group has a 'Series List' column with a linked list of all available size series, These links will bring you to the family page for that series, where you can find detailed information on each size in that series or go to the series' page for a list of sizes in that series.

To learn more about a size family, click the 'family' tab under each type section. There you can read a summary on the family, see the workloads it's recommended for, and view the full family page with specifications for all series in that family.

General purpose

General purpose VM sizes provide balanced CPU-to-memory ratio. Ideal for testing and development, small to medium databases, and low to medium traffic web servers.

Family Workloads Series List
A-family Entry-level economical Av2-series
Previous-gen A-family series
B-family Burstable Bsv2-series
Basv2-series
Bpsv2-series
Previous-gen B-family series
D-family Enterprise-grade applications
Relational databases
In-memory caching
Data analytics
Dpsv6-series and Dplsv6-series
Dpdsv6-series and Dpldsv6-series
Dalsv6 and Daldsv6-series
Dpsv5 and Dpdsv5-series
Dpldsv5 and Dpldsv5-series
Dlsv5 and Dldsv5-series
Dv5 and Dsv5-series
Ddv5 and Ddsv5-series
Dasv5 and Dadsv5-series
Previous-gen D-family series

Compute optimized

Compute optimized VM sizes have a high CPU-to-memory ratio. These sizes are good for medium traffic web servers, network appliances, batch processes, and application servers.

List of compute optimized VM size families:

Family Workloads Series List
F-family Medium traffic web servers
Network appliances
Batch processes
Application servers
Fasv6 and Falsv6-series
Fsv2-series
Previous-gen F-family

To learn more about a specific size family or series, click the tab for that family and scroll to find your desired size series.

Memory optimized

Memory optimized VM sizes offer a high memory-to-CPU ratio that is great for relational database servers, medium to large caches, and in-memory analytics.

List of memory optimized VM sizes with links to each series' family page section:

Family Workloads Series List
E-family Relational databases
Medium to large caches
In-memory analytics
Epsv6 and Epdsv6-series
Easv6 and Eadsv6-series
Ev5 and Esv5-series
Edv5 and Edsv5-series
Easv5 and Eadsv5-series
Epsv5 and Epdsv5-series
Previous-gen families
M-family Extremely large databases
Large amounts of memory
Msv3 and Mdsv3-series
Mv2-series
Msv2 and Mdsv2-series
Other families Older generation memory optimized sizes Previous-gen families

To learn more about a specific size family or series, click the tab for that family and scroll to find your desired size series.

Storage optimized

Storage optimized virtual machine (VM) sizes offer high disk throughput and IO, and are ideal for Big Data, SQL, NoSQL databases, data warehousing, and large transactional databases. Examples include Cassandra, MongoDB, Cloudera, and Redis.

List of storage optimized VM size families:

Family Workloads Series List
L-family High disk throughput and IO
Big Data
SQL and NoSQL databases
Data warehousing
Large transactional databases
Lsv3-series
Lasv3-series
Previous-gen L-family

To learn more about a specific size family or series, click the tab for that family and scroll to find your desired size series.

GPU accelerated

GPU optimized VM sizes are specialized virtual machines available with single, multiple, or fractional GPUs. These sizes are designed for compute-intensive, graphics-intensive, and visualization workloads.

List of GPU optimized VM size families:

Family Workloads Series List
NC-family Compute-intensive
Graphics-intensive
Visualization
NC-series
NCads_H100_v5-series
NCv2-series
NCv3-series
NCasT4_v3-series
NC_A100_v4-series
NV-family Virtual desktop (VDI)
Single-precision compute
Video encoding and rendering
NV-series
NVv3-series
NVv4-series
NVadsA10_v5-series
Previous-gen NV-family

To learn more about a specific size family or series, click the tab for that family and scroll to find your desired size series.


High performance compute

Azure High Performance Compute VMs are optimized for various HPC workloads such as computational fluid dynamics, finite element analysis, frontend and backend EDA, rendering, molecular dynamics, computational geoscience, weather simulation, and financial risk analysis.

List of high performance computing optimized VM size families:

Family Workloads Series List
HB-family High memory bandwidth
Fluid Dynamics
Weather modeling
HB-series
HBv2-series
HBv3-series
HBv4-series

To learn more about a specific size family or series, click the tab for that family and scroll to find your desired size series.

Learn platform sizes content

REST API

For information on using the REST API to query for VM sizes, see the following:

Benchmark scores

Learn more about compute performance for Linux VMs using the CoreMark benchmark scores.

Learn more about compute performance for Windows VMs using the SPECInt benchmark scores.

Other size information

List of all available sizes: Sizes

Pricing Calculator: Pricing Calculator

Information on Disk Types: Disk Types

Next steps

Learn more about how Azure compute units (ACU) can help you compare compute performance across Azure SKUs.

Check out Azure Dedicated Hosts for physical servers able to host one or more virtual machines assigned to one Azure subscription.

Learn how to Monitor Azure virtual machines.