M-Series announcements – GA of Mv3 High Memory and details on Mv3 Very High Memory virtual machines

Mv3 High Memory General Availability

Executing on our plan to have our third version of M-series (Mv3) powered by 4^th generation Intel® Xeon® processors (Sapphire Rapids) across the board, we're excited to announce that Mv3 High Memory (HM) virtual machines (VMs) are now generally available. These next-generation M-series High Memory VMs give customers faster insights, more uptime, lower total cost of ownership and improved price-performance for their most demanding workloads. Mv3 HM VMs are supported for RISE with SAP customers as well. With the release of this Mv3 sub-family and the sub-family that offers around 32TB memory, Microsoft is the only public cloud provider that can provide HANA certified VMs from around 1TB memory to around 32TB memory all powered by 4^th generation Intel® Xeon® processors (Sapphire Rapids).

Key features on the new Mv3 HM VMs

• The Mv3 HM VMs can scale for workloads from 6TB to 16TB.
• Mv3 delivers up to 40% throughput over our Mv2 High Memory (HM), enabling significantly faster SAP HANA data load times for SAP OLAP workloads and significant higher performance per core for SAP OLTP workloads over the previous generation Mv2.
• Powered by Azure Boost, Mv3 HM provides up to 2x more throughput to Azure premium SSD storage and up to 25% improvement in network throughput over Mv2, with more deterministic performance.
• Designed from the ground up for increased resilience against failures in memory, disks, and networking based on intelligence from past generations.
• Available in both disk and diskless offerings allowing customers the flexibility to choose the option that best meets their workload needs.

During our private preview, several customers such as SwissRe unlocked gains from the new VM sizes. In their own words:

“Mv3 High Memory VM results are promising – in average we see a 30% increase in the performance without any big adjustment.”

• SwissRe

Msv3 High Memory series (NVMe) 

Msv3 High Memory series (SCSI) 

Mdsv3 High Memory series (NVMe) 

Mdsv3 High Memory series (SCSI) 

*Read iops is optimized for sequential reads

Regional Availability and Pricing

The VMs are now available in West Europe, North Europe, East US, and West US 2. For pricing details, please take a look here for Windows and Linux.

Additional resources:

• Mv3 High Memory VM Spec

• SAP Certification for Mv3 on Azure

Details on Mv3 Very High Memory Virtual Machines

We are thrilled to unveil the latest and largest additions to our Mv3-Series, Standard_M896ixds_32_v3 and Standard_M1792ixds_32_v3 VM SKUs. These new VM SKUs are the result of a close collaboration between Microsoft, SAP, experienced hardware partners, and our valued customers.

Key features on the new Mv3 VHM VMs

• Unmatched Memory Capacity: With close to 32TB of memory, both the Standard_M896ixds_32_v3 and Standard_M1792ixds_32_v3 VMs are ideal for supporting very large in-memory databases and workloads. 

• High CPU Power:  Featuring 896 cores in the Standard_M896ixds_32_v3 VM and 1792 vCPUs** in the Standard_M1792ixds_32_v3 VM, these VMs are designed to handle high-end S/4HANA workloads, providing more CPU power than other public cloud offerings. Enhanced Network and Storage Bandwidth: Both VM types provide the highest network and storage bandwidth available in Azure for a full node VM, including up to 200-Gbps network bandwidth with Azure Boost. 

• Optimal Performance for SAP HANA: Certified for SAP HANA, these VMs adhere to the SAP prescribed socket-to-memory ratio, ensuring optimal performance for in-memory analytics and relational database servers. 

**Hyperthreaded vCPUs

Thanks to additional co-authors of this article Leeban Hassen, Kiran Gantikota, and Aysha Keen