We are excited to announce the GA (in selected regions) of new premium-series hardware configurations for Azure SQL Hyperscale databases.
Based on the latest generation of Intel® Xeon Scalable processors (3rd gen - Ice Lake) and AMD EPYC™ 7763v (Milan) chipsets, this premium-series hardware offers significantly improved performance and scalability over the standard-series (previously known as ‘Gen5’) hardware offerings and allows you to migrate your performance demanding workloads to Azure SQL Database Hyperscale. In addition, a new memory optimized option within the premium-series provides more memory per vCore to meet the needs of your most memory-intensive workloads.
The following table summarizes the key technical details for the new premium-series hardware:
|
Standard-series (Gen5) |
Premium-series |
Memory optimized premium-series |
|
|
CPU |
Standard-series Hyperscale databases are hosted on a variety of hardware including:
Intel® E5-2673 v4 (Broadwell); Intel® 8370C (Ice Lake); AMD EPYC™ 7763v (Milan) |
Premium-series Hyperscale databases are hosted only on latest hardware generation from Intel and AMD as follows:
Intel® 8370C (Ice Lake); AMD EPYC™ 7763v (Milan) |
Premium-series memory-optimized Hyperscale databases are hosted only on latest hardware generation from Intel and AMD as follows:
Intel® 8370C (Ice Lake); AMD EPYC™ 7763v (Milan) |
|
Number of vCores |
2-80 vCores |
2-128 vCores |
2-80 vCores |
|
Memory |
5.1 GB per vCore Max 408 GB per instance |
5.1 GB per vCore Max 625 GB per instance |
10.2 GB per vCore Max 830 GB per instance |
|
Maximum data storage |
100 TB |
100 TB |
100 TB |
|
vCore price difference |
- |
Priced similar to standard-series |
Approximately 40% higher compared to premium-series |
|
Performance benefits |
Faster CPU. A 60% increase in the maximum available number of vCores. |
Faster CPU. Memory intensive workloads such as HTAP or analytics can benefit from 2x memory per vCore. |
- Both premium-series hardware options are using latest CPUs and memory technologies from Intel and AMD, which provide a boost to compute performance relative to standard-series hardware.
- Premium-series option offers faster CPU performance compared to Standard-series and the ability to increase vCores by 60% by scaling up to 128 vCores.
- Premium-series memory optimized option offers double the amount of memory relative to premium-series with up to 830 GB of memory at 80 vCores.
- Due to the added memory and lower price, premium-series memory optimized option is a great alternative to M-series hardware in Azure SQL Database, which is to be retired in September 2023.
Comparison Demo
Here is a sample Hammer DB Demo running TPCC like workloads comparing Azure SQL Database Hyperscale Standard (Gen5) series vs Premium Series hardware showing a 20%+ improvement in performance at similar price point.
Current limitations to be noted:
-
Premium-series (including memory optimized) is only supported in the following initial regions at the moment but regional availability will continue to improve over the coming months.
- Australia East (including Zone redundancy)
- Australia SouthEast
- Brazil South
- Canada Central (including Zone redundancy)
- Canada East
- Central US (including Zone redundancy)
- Central India
- South India
- East Asia
- East US (including Zone redundancy)
- East US2
- France Central
- Germany West Central
- Japan East
- Japan West
- Northcentral US
- North Europe (including Zone redundancy)
- Southeast Asia
- Southcentral US
- Switzerland North
- UK South (including Zone redundancy)
- UK West
- West Europe (including Zone redundancy)
- West Central US
- West US
- West US 2 (including Zone redundancy)
- West US 3 (including Zone redundancy)
* Indicates that Premium-Series Memory Optimized hardware option is not yet available in that region.
- Zone redundancy for premium-series and memory optimized premium-series is limited to a few regions as noted above, but expected to be more widely available over the coming months.
- Azure SQL Database maintenance window is supported for premium-series and memory optimized premium-series in some of the regions but expected to be more widely available over the coming months.
- Azure Reserved instance for Premium-series and memory optimized premium-series is now available as of November/2023
Microsoft
