'M' family memory optimized VM size series

Applies to: ✔️ Linux VMs ✔️ Windows VMs ✔️ Flexible scale sets ✔️ Uniform scale sets

The 'M' family of VM size series are one of Azure's ultra memory-optimized VM instances designed for extremely memory-intensive workloads, such as large in-memory databases, data warehousing, and high-performance computing (HPC). Equipped with substantial RAM capacities and high vCPU capabilities, the M-family VMs support applications and services that require massive amounts of memory and significant computational power. High resource allocation makes the M-family particularly well-suited for handling tasks such as heavy SQL Server and other RDBMS workloads, complex scientific simulations, real-time data processing, and large-scale enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, ensuring peak performance for the most demanding data-centric applications.

Workloads and use cases

SQL Server workloads with high memory needs: The M-family is particularly effective for running SQL Server machines with high memory requirements, such as for online transaction processing (OLTP) or data analytics.

In-memory databases: The M-family is particularly effective for running in-memory databases that require large amounts of RAM like SQL Server, or SAP HANA.

Big data applications: The M-family is ideal for handling big data applications that need to process and analyze huge datasets in memory, improving performance and reducing the time to insights.

Data warehousing: M-family VMs provide the performance and memory needed for data warehousing applications, facilitating faster queries and better handling of large volumes of data.

Enterprise applications: The M-family supports large-scale enterprise applications, including ERP and CRM systems, which benefit from having more memory to manage larger datasets and more complex transactions efficiently.

Heavy workloads in virtualized environments: The M-family is well-equipped to handle heavy virtualized environments, offering substantial memory for hosting multiple virtual machines and applications on a single physical server.

Series in family

Mbsv3 and Mbdsv3-series

The Memory-and-storage optimized Mbsv3 series is based on the fourth generation Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors and delivers higher remote disk storage performance. These new VM sizes offer up to 650,000 IOPS and 10 GB/s of remote disk storage throughput (Premium SSD v2 and Ultra Disk), up to 4 TiB of RAM and up to 650,000 IOPS and 10 GB/s throughput to remote disk storage (with NVMe interface by using Ultra Disk and Premium SSD v2).

The increased remote storage performance of these VMs is ideal for storage throughput-intensive workloads such as relational databases and data analytics applications.

The resource allocation and high-performance capabilities of the Mbsv3 VM series make them particularly well suited for SQL Server workloads with high memory needs. Workloads such as online transaction processing (OLTP), data analytics, in-memory databases, data warehousing, and the consolidation of SQL Server workloads for efficient management of multiple SQL Server instances.

View the full Mbsv3-series page

Part Quantity
Count Units
Specs
SKU ID, Performance Units, etc.
Processor 16 - 176 vCPUs Intel Xeon 4th generation Scalable (Sapphire Rapids) [x86-64]
Memory 128 - 1536 GiB
Local Storage None
Remote Storage 64 Disks 44,000 - 260,000 IOPS
1,000 - 6,000 MBps
Network 8 NICs 8,000 - 50,000 Mbps
Accelerators None

Msv3 and Mdsv3-series

The Msv3 and Mdsv3 Medium Memory(MM) series, powered by 4th generation Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors, are the next generation of memory-optimized VM sizes delivering faster performance, lower total cost of ownership and improved resilience to failures compared to previous generation Mv2 VMs. The Mv3 MM offers VM sizes of up to 4TB of memory and 4,000 MBps throughout to remote storage and provides up to 25% networking performance improvements over previous generations.

View the full Msv3 and Mdsv3-series page.

Part Quantity
Count Units
Specs
SKU ID, Performance Units, etc.
Processor 12 - 176vCores Intel® Xeon® Scalable (Sapphire Rapids)
Memory 240 - 3892GiB
Data Disks 64Disks 16250 - 160000IOPS / 100 - 4000MBps
Network 8NICs 4000 - 40000Mbps
Accelerators None

Mv2-series

The Mv2-series features high throughput, low latency platform running on a hyper-threaded Intel® Xeon® Platinum 8180M 2.5GHz (Skylake) processor with an all core base frequency of 2.5 GHz and a max turbo frequency of 3.8 GHz. All Mv2-series virtual machine sizes can use both standard and premium persistent disks. Mv2-series instances are memory optimized VM sizes providing unparalleled computational performance to support 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.

View the full Mv2-series page.

Part Quantity
Count Units
Specs
SKU ID, Performance Units, etc.
Processor 208 - 416vCores Intel® Xeon® Platinum 8180M (Skylake)
Memory 2850 - 11400GiB
Data Disks 64Disks 40000 - 250000IOPS / 800 - 2000MBps
Network 8NICs 16000 - 32000Mbps
Accelerators None

Msv2 and Mdsv2-series

The Msv2 and Mdsv2 Medium Memory VM Series features Intel® Xeon® Platinum 8280 (Cascade Lake) processor with an all core base frequency of 2.7 GHz and 4.0 GHz single core turbo frequency. With these VMs, customers achieve increased flexibility with local disk and diskless options. Customers also have access to a set of new isolated VM sizes with more CPU and memory that go up to 192 vCPU with 4 TiB of memory.

View the full Msv2 and Mdsv2-series page.

Part Quantity
Count Units
Specs
SKU ID, Performance Units, etc.
Processor 32 - 192vCores Intel® Xeon® Platinum 8280 (Cascade Lake)
Memory 875 - 4096GiB
Data Disks 32 - 64Disks 5000 - 250000IOPS / 400 - 4000MBps
Network 8NICs 8000 - 30000Mbps
Accelerators None

M-series

The M-series offers a high vCPU count (up to 128 vCPUs) and a large amount of memory (up to 3.8 TiB). It's also ideal for extremely large databases or other applications that benefit from high vCPU counts and large amounts of memory. M-series sizes are supported both on the Intel® Xeon® CPU E7-8890 v3 @ 2.50GHz and on the Intel® Xeon® Platinum 8280M (Cascade Lake).

View the full M-series page.

Part Quantity
Count Units
Specs
SKU ID, Performance Units, etc.
Processor 8 - 128vCores Intel® Xeon® CPU E7-8890 v3 (Haswell-EX)
Intel® Xeon® Platinum 8280M (Cascade Lake)
Memory 218.75 - 3892GiB
Data Disks 8 - 64Disks 5000 - 250000IOPS / 100 - 4000MBps
Network 2 - 8NICs 2000 - 32000Mbps
Accelerators None

Previous-generation M family series

For older sizes, see previous generation sizes.

Other size information

List of all available sizes: Sizes

Pricing Calculator: Pricing Calculator

Information on Disk Types: Disk Types

Next steps

Learn more about how Azure compute units (ACU) can help you compare compute performance across Azure SKUs.

Check out Azure Dedicated Hosts for physical servers able to host one or more virtual machines assigned to one Azure subscription.

Learn how to Monitor Azure virtual machines.