Microsoft releases SAP HANA Standard Sizing certified VM with close to 24TB memory

Responding to a larger number of customers who required very large HANA instances that consume a lot of memory and CPU resources, Microsoft Azure is announcing the availability of our most recent and largest Mv2-Series VM, called Standard_M832ixs_v2 in selected Azure regions. The release of this new VM SKU is a product of collaboration between Microsoft, SAP, a very SAP experienced hardware partner, and customers.

Due to the ramp-up of hardware capacity hosting this new VM type, the VM type will not show up automatically for selection within your Azure subscription. You need to work with your Microsoft account team to get your Azure subscription allow-listed for the new VM type to be deployable for you. This new VM type is going to be the only offer in this size category in public cloud that is available in Pay-as-you-Go (PAYG), 1-year RI, or 3-year RI pricing. Deployment, administration, and operation of this new VM type doesn't differ at all from other Azure VM types. One of our customers using this new VM type was using our SAP Deployment Automation Framework to deploy our new Standard_ M832isx_v2 VMs and the surrounding VMs.

In general, the Azure Mv2-series are memory optimized VM sizes providing unparalleled computational performance to support very large in-memory databases and workloads, with a high memory-to-CPU ratio that is ideal for relational database servers, large caches, and in-memory analytics. Thousands of those VMs are deployed by customers in many different Azure regions already. All of these VMs are certified for SAP HANA Standard Sizing. Our Standard_M832ixs_v2 VM is the new flagship within the Mv2-series of VMs and continues the tradition to serve SAP HANA customers in the most optimal way. 

This Mv2 Series VM features high throughput, low latency platform running on hyper-threaded Intel® Platinum 8280 (Cascade Lake) processor with an all-core base frequency of 2.7 GHz and 4.0 GHz Single core turbo frequency.  All Mv2-series virtual machine sizes are SAP HANA and NetWeaver certified in combination with Azure premium SSD, Ultra disk, and ANF storage.

The new Mv2 VM SKU - Standard_M832ixs_v2 supports close to 24TB of memory with 832 vCPUs making it the largest memory optimized offering from Azure. It is also the largest HANA certified VM on the market that follows SAP HANA Standard Sizing methods as it adheres to the SAP prescribed socket-to-memory ratio. This means more CPU power than other offers in the public cloud market. And CPU power that our customers that are using this new VM type already are requiring for their high-end S/4HANA workloads. The new VM type also provides the highest network and storage bandwidth offered by Azure for a full node VM. The new VM is an isolated VM size that runs in a non-shared manner on the particular host. SAPS Rating of the new VM type can be found in SAP note 1928533 - SAP Applications on Microsoft Azure: Supported Products and Azure VM types (SAP login required).

Some of the key features of the VM include:

• Premium Storage: Supported
• Premium Storage caching: Supported
• Premium Storage + Write Accelerator: Supported  
• Azure Ultra disk: Supported
• Azure NetApp Files: Supported
• Live Migration: Not Supported
• Memory Preserving Updates: Not Supported
• VM Generation Support: Generation 2
• Accelerated Networking: Mandatory
• Ephemeral OS Disks: Not Supported
• SAP HANA Certification – OLTP Workloads Scale-up and Scale-out 
• Isolated/Full Node VM – Yes

For more detailed data about the SAP HANA certification, check the SAP HANA hardware directory entry of Standard_M832isx_v2.