Azure F Series Virtual Machines Overview

The Azure F Series Virtual Machines are designed to provide high-performance computing for workloads that require a high number of cores and large amounts of memory.

These virtual machines are built on the AMD EPYC 7002 processor, which offers a high core count and large memory capacity.

Each F Series Virtual Machine comes with a range of options for storage, networking, and scalability, allowing you to tailor your virtual machine to meet your specific needs.

The F Series Virtual Machines are ideal for workloads such as high-performance computing, scientific simulations, and data analytics.

Intriguing read: Azure B Series

Azure F-series virtual machines are designed for compute-intensive workloads, featuring a higher CPU to memory ratio. They're ideal for batch processing, web servers, gaming, and analytics.

The F-series VMs come with 2GB RAM and 16GB of local SSD per vCPU, making them a popular choice for compute-intensive applications. They offer a wide range of sizes to choose from, catering to different workload needs.

Memory Optimized VMs are designed for workloads that require a lot of memory and fast data access, such as large-scale databases and in-memory analytics. They provide faster performance and better data processing capabilities compared to general-purpose VMs.

On a similar theme: Azure Data Studio vs Azure Data Explorer

Compute Optimized VMs are ideal for running compute-intensive workloads or applications that require a lot of processing power.

These VMs come with higher CPU-to-memory ratios, designed to deliver high performance for demanding workloads, and are often used for machine learning and analytics applications.

The F-series is the most popular series of compute optimized VMs on Azure, offering a wide range of sizes to choose from.

A higher vCPU-to-memory ratio is a key characteristic of compute-optimized VMs, making them suitable for applications that prioritize processing over memory.

Some common use cases for compute-optimized VMs include heavy-traffic web servers and network-centric workloads.

Azure provides several classes of compute-optimized VMs to choose from, including the F-series, which is built with a higher processor-to-memory ratio.

The F-series VMs feature 2GB RAM and 16GB of local SSD per vCPU, making them well-suited for compute-intensive workloads.

Memory Optimized VMs are specifically designed for workloads that require a lot of memory and fast data access. They're ideal for running large-scale databases and in-memory analytics.

These VMs can store more data in RAM, reducing reliance on slower disk-based storage systems. This leads to faster application load times and quicker query response times.

Memory Optimized VMs provide faster performance and better data processing capabilities compared to general-purpose VMs. This makes them a great choice for memory-intensive applications.

With more available memory, these VMs can handle large amounts of data with ease.

Take a look at this: Azure Data Studio Connect to Azure Sql

Scale Sets are a game-changer for high availability.

You can create and manage a group of load-balanced VMs to provide high availability to your applications. This automatically scales your application as demand changes.

Automated orchestration makes it easy to distribute virtual machines across Availability Zones or Availability Sets.

Orchestration modes support up to 1,000 VM instances, although the limit is 600 if you use custom VM images.

A custom script extension can be used to download and execute scripts on multiple virtual machines for post-deployment configuration or management tasks.

For your interest: Azure Vm Series

Azure Monitor can automate the collection of information from the VMs in your scale set.

You only pay for the underlying computing services, such as virtual machines, load balancers, or managed disk storage, with no additional cost to scale sets.

Here's a comparison of manual VM groups and Virtual Machine Scale Sets:

Azure F-Series virtual machines are highly scalable and can be configured to meet specific needs. They support up to 128 vCPUs and 3.8 TB of memory.

To configure an Azure F-Series virtual machine, you'll need to choose a size that suits your workload. The F-Series offers sizes ranging from 8 vCPUs and 32 GB of memory to 128 vCPUs and 3.8 TB of memory.

The F-Series is designed for high-performance workloads, such as HPC, gaming, and scientific simulations. It's perfect for applications that require high CPU and memory resources.

Azure offers four main categories of VM sizes: general purpose, compute optimized, memory optimized, and storage optimized.

General purpose VMs are well suited for most workloads and offer balanced CPU-to-memory ratios. They’re available in several different series such as A-series and D-series, each with different sizes ranging from small (e.g., 1 core) to large (e.g., 64 cores).

Compute optimized VMs have higher CPU-to-memory ratios than general purpose ones and are designed for compute-intensive workloads. The F-series is an example of this category and includes sizes ranging from 2 vCPUs up to 72 vCPUs.

The F-series offers a range of sizes to choose from, each with different levels of performance and pricing options. An example is the F2, which includes two vCPUs and 4 GB RAM starting at just $0.089 per hour.

Memory optimized VMs are designed for memory-intensive workloads such as in-memory databases like SAP HANA or large-scale caching scenarios. The E-series is an example of this category and includes sizes ranging from 16 GB RAM up to 432 GB RAM.

Storage optimized VMs have high disk throughput rates with local SSD storage attached directly to the virtual machine’s physical host. The L-series is an example of this category and includes sizes ranging from 8 vCPUs up to 80 vCPUs.

Related reading: Azure E Series Performancecap

When setting up your virtual machine, you have several disk options to choose from. You can select from Standard HDD, Standard SSD, and Premium SSD as your OS disk type.

Each virtual machine comes with one attached operating system disk, which has a maximum capacity of 4,095 GiB. This is a crucial consideration when planning your VM's storage needs.

You can enable ultra disk compatibility for high-performance disk storage, which results in a reservation charge even without attaching an Ultra Disk. This is a trade-off to consider when optimizing your VM's performance.

A temporary disk is also provided for each VM, offering short-term storage for page or swap files. However, data on this disk may be lost during a maintenance event or when you redeploy a VM.

Here are the main disk options and their key characteristics:

Availability zones support managed disks, which is an important consideration when planning your VM's deployment.

Availability sets are used to group virtual machines that share common uptime requirements, such as web servers and database servers. This allows for greater flexibility in managing and scaling your virtual machines.

You can create an availability set in Azure to ensure that your virtual machines are not all affected by a single outage or maintenance event. Azure Scale Set vs Availability Set: This is a key concept in Azure virtual machine configuration.

Availability sets can be used to configure virtual machines for high availability, which is critical for business-critical applications. This is often used in conjunction with load balancing and other high availability features.

To create a virtual machine in Azure, you can choose to create it in an availability set. Note: This question was extracted from our AZ-104 Microsoft Azure Administrator Practice Exams.

The F Series VMs are compute-optimized, designed for workloads that require high processing power.

These VMs have a higher CPU-to-memory ratio, making them ideal for batch processing, web servers, gaming, and analytics.

The F Series VMs offer a wide range of sizes to choose from, providing flexibility for different workloads.

The F Series VMs are built with a 2.4 GHz Intel Xeon processor, which can reach speeds up to 3.1 GHz with Intel Turbo Boost Technology 2.0.

The Fsv2 series VM types offer up to twice the performance boost for vector processing workloads, with a base core frequency of 2.7 GHz and a maximum single-core turbo frequency of 3.7 GHz.

Additional reading: Azure 2

Storage Optimized VMs are perfect for applications that need to handle large amounts of data or perform complex analytics, thanks to their high throughput and low latency local disks.

These VMs are optimized for high speed data access, making them ideal for workloads that involve lots of random reads and writes.

Storage Optimized VMs offer high input/output operations per second (IOPS) capabilities, which is a game-changer for applications that require fast data processing.

On a similar theme: Windows Azure Storage Services

The Fsv2 series VM types offer up to twice the performance boost for vector processing workloads, thanks to their base core frequency of 2.7 GHz and maximum single-core turbo frequency of 3.7 GHz.

This makes the Fsv2 series a great choice for applications that require fast data processing, such as data analytics or scientific simulations.

The Fsv2 series also offers the best value for its price based on the ratio of Azure Compute Unit (ACU) per vCPU, making it a cost-effective option for businesses that need fast and efficient computing power.

The F-series VMs are specifically designed for compute-intensive workloads.

They feature a higher CPU to memory ratio, making them perfect for batch processing, web servers, gaming, and analytics.

With 2GB RAM and 16GB of local SSD per vCPU, you can expect high performance for demanding workloads.

The F-series is the most popular series of compute optimized VMs on Azure, offering a wide range of sizes to choose from.

This makes it easy to find the right size for your specific needs.

The F-series VMs are great for workloads that require speed, thanks to the 2.4 GHz Intel Xeon processor, which can reach speeds up to 3.1 GHz with the Intel Turbo Boost Technology 2.0.

Analytics, gaming servers, web servers, and batch processing would work well with the F-series.

Some compute-intensive workloads require high processor capability relative to the amount of memory available, making the F-series a great choice.

Use this setup for machine learning and analytics applications, heavy-traffic web servers or network-centric workloads.

The Fsv2 series VM types, which are part of the F-series, offer up to twice the performance boost for vector processing workloads, with a base core frequency of 2.7 GHz and a maximum single-core turbo frequency of 3.7 GHz.

This is a significant performance boost, making the Fsv2 series a great option for workloads that require high vector processing capabilities.

The Azure F-series VMs are a popular choice for compute-intensive workloads.

They offer a higher CPU-to-memory ratio compared to other VM types, making them ideal for applications that require a lot of processing power.

In contrast to standard VMs, F-series VMs prioritize processing power over memory, making them a better fit for workloads that don't require a lot of memory.

This is particularly useful for machine learning and analytics applications that rely heavily on processing power.

Azure F-series VMs are designed to deliver high performance, with a higher vCPU-to-memory ratio than other instance types.

This means that F-series VMs are better suited for heavy-traffic web servers or network-centric workloads.

The F-series offers a wide range of sizes to choose from, making it easy to find the right VM for your specific needs.