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

Question

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

Chengxiang Ren 1

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?

vipullag-MSFT 26,492 Reputation points Moderator

2022-03-08T06:28:12.427+00:00

@Chengxiang Ren

Any update on the issue?

Just checking in to see if you got a chance to see previous response from Prrudram-MSFT.
If the suggested response helped you resolve your issue, please 'Accept as answer', so that it can help others in the community looking for help on similar topics.

3 answers

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vipullag-MSFT 26,492 Reputation points Moderator

2022-03-08T06:28:12.427+00:00

@Chengxiang Ren

Any update on the issue?

Just checking in to see if you got a chance to see previous response from Prrudram-MSFT.
If the suggested response helped you resolve your issue, please 'Accept as answer', so that it can help others in the community looking for help on similar topics.

Answer 1

Andrew Perry 11

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.

Butler Jonathan 61 Reputation points

2024-09-16T10:15:13.4366667+00:00

Sooooo, is this possible or not...what if single thread speed is THE most important thing in your workload and parallelism comes second?

Answer 2

Ravi Kanth Koppala 3,391 Microsoft Employee Moderator

@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.

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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.

Chengxiang Ren 1 Reputation point

2022-02-14T23:35:52.283+00:00

Thanks for the answer. So If I want to use the desired CPU SKU for consistent performance, the only thing I can do is manually delete the vm and redeploy the vm until it comes up with the target CPU SKU?
Ravi Kanth Koppala 3,391 Reputation points Microsoft Employee Moderator

2022-02-15T01:52:40.117+00:00
@Chengxiang Ren ,
For changing the SKU, you don't need to delete the VM and recreate it. Follow the below steps to make the necessary SKU change.

Open the Azure portal.

Open the page for the virtual machine.

In the left menu, select Size.

Pick a new size from the list of available sizes and then select Resize.

Note:

If the virtual machine is currently running, changing its size will cause it to be restarted.

If your VM is still running and you don't see the size you want in the list, stopping the virtual machine may reveal more sizes.

Hope I answered your question. 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.
Chengxiang Ren 1 Reputation point

2022-02-15T02:03:06.737+00:00

Thanks for the answer. But I am not asking about changing the VM SKU (i.e. resize the VM), but the CPU SKU for the same VM type. For example, if I provision a Standard_D16_v3 VM, all the size (number of vCPUs, memory, temp storage etc) are consistent except the CPU model, it could be one of 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.

So if I want a Standard_D16_v3 with exactly the Intel® Xeon® E5-2673 v4 2.3 GHz CPU, how could I achieve that?

Answer 3

Prrudram-MSFT 28,366 Microsoft Employee Moderator

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

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