Microsoft announces general availability of Azure VMs with Ampere Altra ARM processor

Microsoft has announced the general availability of virtual machines with the Ampere Altra Arm processor from September 1. Customers will be able to run them in ten Azure regions and multiple Availability Zones around the world.

In addition, ARM-based VMs can be included in Kubernetes clusters managed by Azure Kubernetes Service. This option was available in the previous version and will be available in the coming weeks in all regions offering new VMs.

Azure ARM-based VMS have up to 64 vCPU cores, 8 GB of memory per core, and 40 Gbps network bandwidth.

They also come with fast local storage on an SSD, and additional storage can be attached to VMs.

Microsoft describes them as" designed to efficiently run scalable cloud workloads, " including open source databases, Java, and .NET applications, as well as gaming, web servers, application servers, and media servers .

Microsoft said it will continue to support Alma and Rocky Linux.

"The shared availability of Microsoft Azure VMs on Arm marks an important milestone in rethinking what is possible in cloud computing," said Chris Bergi, Arm senior vice president and general manager of business infrastructure.

Research firm Omdia said last August that it predicts Arm will account for 14% of servers by 2025.