Azure Confidential VM options

Grein
09/19/2024

Azure offers a choice of Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) options from both AMD and Intel. These TEEs allow you to create Confidential VM environments with excellent price-to-performance ratios, all without requiring any code changes.

For AMD-based Confidential VMs, the technology used is AMD SEV-SNP, which was introduced with 3rd Gen AMD EPYC™ processors. On the other hand, Intel-based Confidential VMs utilize Intel TDX, a technology introduced with 4th Gen Intel® Xeon® processors. Both technologies have different implementations, however both provide similar protections from the cloud infrastructure stack.

Sizes

We offer the following VM sizes:

Size Family	TEE	Description
DCasv5-series	AMD SEV-SNP	General purpose CVM with remote storage. No local temporary disk.
DCadsv5-series	AMD SEV-SNP	General purpose CVM with local temporary disk.
ECasv5-series	AMD SEV-SNP	Memory-optimized CVM with remote storage. No local temporary disk.
ECadsv5-series	AMD SEV-SNP	Memory-optimized CVM with local temporary disk.
DCesv5-series	Intel TDX	General purpose CVM with remote storage. No local temporary disk.
DCedsv5-series	Intel TDX	General purpose CVM with local temporary disk.
ECesv5-series	Intel TDX	Memory-optimized CVM with remote storage. No local temporary disk.
ECedsv5-series	Intel TDX	Memory-optimized CVM with local temporary disk.
NCCadsH100v5-series	AMD SEV-SNP and NVIDIA H100 Tensor Core GPUs	CVM with Confidential GPU.

Note

Memory-optimized confidential VMs offer double the ratio of memory per vCPU count.

Azure CLI commands

You can use the Azure CLI with your confidential VMs.

To see a list of confidential VM sizes, run the following command. Replace <vm-series> with the series you want to use. The output shows information about available regions and availability zones.

vm_series='DCASv5'
az vm list-skus \
    --size dc \
    --query "[?family=='standard${vm_series}Family'].{name:name,locations:locationInfo[0].location,AZ_a:locationInfo[0].zones[0],AZ_b:locationInfo[0].zones[1],AZ_c:locationInfo[0].zones[2]}" \
    --all \
    --output table

For a more detailed list, run the following command instead:

vm_series='DCASv5'
az vm list-skus \
    --size dc \
    --query "[?family=='standard${vm_series}Family']"

Deployment considerations

Consider the following settings and choices before deploying confidential VMs.

Azure subscription

To deploy a confidential VM instance, consider a pay-as-you-go subscription or other purchase option. If you're using an Azure free account, the quota doesn't allow the appropriate number of Azure compute cores.

You might need to increase the cores quota in your Azure subscription from the default value. Default limits vary depending on your subscription category. Your subscription might also limit the number of cores you can deploy in certain VM size families, including the confidential VM sizes.

To request a quota increase, open an online customer support request.

If you have large-scale capacity needs, contact Azure Support. Azure quotas are credit limits, not capacity guarantees. You only incur charges for cores that you use.

Pricing

For pricing options, see the Linux Virtual Machines Pricing.

Regional availability

For availability information, see which VM products are available by Azure region.

Resizing

Confidential VMs run on specialized hardware, so you can only resize confidential VM instances to other confidential sizes in the same region. For example, if you have a DCasv5-series VM, you can resize to another DCasv5-series instance or a DCesv5-series instance.

It's not possible to resize a non-confidential VM to a confidential VM.

High availability and disaster recovery

You're responsible for creating high availability and disaster recovery solutions for your confidential VMs. Planning for these scenarios helps minimize and avoid prolonged downtime.

Deployment with ARM templates

Azure Resource Manager is the deployment and management service for Azure. You can:

Secure and organize your resources after deployment with the management features, like access control, locks, and tags.
Create, update, and delete resources in your Azure subscription using the management layer.
Use Azure Resource Manager templates (ARM templates) to deploy confidential VMs on AMD processors.

Make sure to specify the following properties for your VM in the parameters section (parameters):

VM size (vmSize). Choose from the different confidential VM families and sizes.
OS image name (osImageName). Choose from the qualified OS images.
Disk encryption type (securityType). Choose from VMGS-only encryption (VMGuestStateOnly) or full OS disk pre-encryption (DiskWithVMGuestState), which might result in longer provisioning times. For Intel TDX instances only we also support another security type (NonPersistedTPM) which has no VMGS or OS disk encryption.

Next steps

Deploy a confidential VM from the Azure portal

For more information see our Confidential VM FAQ.

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