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Microsoft Azure: Using SSDs in Azure Virtual Machines and Azure Cloud Services

Recently Microsoft released a new set of VM sizes for Microsoft Azure. What makes these new VMs special is that they not only offer faster vCPUs (approximately 60% faster than the A series) and more memory (up to 112 GB), the new VM sizes also all have a local SSD disk (up to 800 GB) to enable much faster IO reads and writes.

If you are looking for even better performance, these are the VM sizes you need!

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The new VM sizes include the following:

General Purpose D-Series VMs

Name vCores Memory (GB) Local SSD Disk (GB)
Standard_D1 1 3.5 50
Standard_D2 2 7 100
Standard_D3 4 14 200
Standard_D4 8 28 400

High Memory D-Series VMs

Name vCores Memory (GB) Local SSD Disk(GB)
Standard_D11 2 14 100
Standard_D12 4 28 200
Standard_D13 8 56 400
Standard_D14 16 112 800

To learn more about the D-Series please read this post.

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