Microsoft has announced new and larger “F-Series” Azure instances.
The new instances also have a new naming scheme that means the F1 instance has one CPU core and the F16 instance has 16 cores. Geddit? This naming scheme will henceforth apply to all Azure instances.
The new instances run 2.4 GHz Intel Xeon E5-2673 v3 (Haswell) processor and can burst to 3.1 GHz. Redmond says the F-series offer “... the same CPU performance as the Dv2-Series of VMs with 2GB of memory per CPU core at a lower per-hour price.”
Here's the new “Standard storage-optimized” instances and their specs.
Size | CPU Cores | Memory | Temporary Disk (SSD) | Max Network Bandwidth |
---|---|---|---|---|
Standard_F1 | 1 | 2 GB | 16 GB | moderate |
Standard_F2 | 2 | 4 GB | 32 GB | high |
Standard_F4 | 4 | 8 GB | 64 GB | high |
Standard_F8 | 8 | 16 GB | 128 GB | high |
Standard_F16 | 16 | 32 GB | 256 GB | very high |
And here's the specs of the new “Premium storage optimized” instances.
Size | CPU Cores | Memory | Temporary Disk (SSD) | Premium Storage Cache Size | Max Network Bandwidth |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Standard_F1s | 1 | 2 GB | 4 GB | 12 GB | moderate |
Standard_F2s | 2 | 4 GB | 8 GB | 24 GB | high |
Standard_F4s | 4 | 8 GB | 16 GB | 48 GB | high |
Standard_F8s | 8 | 16 GB | 32 GB | 96 GB | high |
Standard_F16s | 16 | 32 GB | 64 GB | 192 GB | very high |
For now, you can get both types of instances in the following Azure regions:
- Central US
- East US
- East US 2
- South Central US
- West US
- North Europe
- West Europe
- Southeast Asia
- Japan West
- Central India
- South India
- Canada Central
- Canada East
If you use North Central US, East Asia, Japan East or Australia East or Southeast, you can use only standard storage optimized F-Series instances. The new instance type will land in other Azure regions real soon now. ®