Does Azure provide a way to provision VMs with certain CPU SKUs

Chengxiang Ren 1 Reputation point
2022-02-11T00:52:16.5+00:00

Same tier of Azure VMs could use different CPU SKUs from the list of CPU SKUs Azure provided. For example, Dv3-series sizes run on the 3rd Generation Intel® Xeon® Platinum 8370C (Ice Lake), Intel® Xeon® Platinum 8272CL (Cascade Lake), Intel® Xeon® 8171M 2.1GHz (Skylake), Intel® Xeon® E5-2673 v4 2.3 GHz (Broadwell), or the Intel® Xeon® E5-2673 v3 2.4 GHz (Haswell) processors (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/dv3-dsv3-series)

It seems that Azure randomly choose the CPU SKUs from the list when creating VMs. Is there a deterministic way of choosing the desired CPU SKUs while creating VMs? Does Azure provide any API or option to achieve that?

Azure Virtual Machines
Azure Virtual Machines
An Azure service that is used to provision Windows and Linux virtual machines.
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  1. Andrew Perry 11 Reputation points
    2023-05-17T14:30:54.63+00:00

    Certainly for me, we are running a Microsoft Product that specifies a minimum CPU of 2.66GHZ.

    We have a D v3 series which lists a couple of different CPU's. One of these is too low at 2.49. Another is even lower at 2.1 and the other is fine at 2.8GHZ

    But due to not being able to select the CPU that would meet the requirements, we now have to pick a different, more expensive Dds v5 Series just in order to pick something that ONLY specifies a CPU that meets the requirement.

    Even more, whilst these CPU's say they will boost to meet the requirements, Microsoft have confirmed back that it is the core clock that needs to meet the minimum requirement to remain under support.

    1 person found this answer helpful.

  2. Ravi Kanth Koppala 3,391 Reputation points Microsoft Employee Moderator
    2022-02-11T05:01:08.327+00:00

    @Chengxiang Ren ,
    Thank you for reaching out to the Microsoft Q&A platform. Happy to answer your question.

    While you provision any new VM, you can only select what is your VM requirement and the parameters you can select includes VM Size, vCPUs, RAM (GiB), Data disks, Max IOPS, Temp Storage (GiB). It is up to the Azure fabric to host the VM matching your selection criteria (hardware abstraction). So, you are correct; Azure will create the VM based on your requirement and the available pool in that data center.

    Thanks.

    ----------

    Please "Accept as Answer" and Upvote if any of the above helped so that, it can help others in the community looking for remediation for similar issues.


  3. Prrudram-MSFT 28,366 Reputation points Microsoft Employee Moderator
    2022-02-22T20:51:04.74+00:00

    Hello @Chengxiang Ren ,

    This isn't possible to control what model/version of the CPU to be deployed across different VMs. We don't have an option to change the CPU SKU for VMs in azure portal as well as in command line. Could I know what is the reason behind this requirement?

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