Azure Virtual Machines Cheat Sheet
Azure Virtual Machines Cheat Sheet
Azure Virtual Machines Cheat Sheet
Operating Systems
Marketplace contains supported images. You can create custom images for other options.
Windows :
5 years of mainstream support + 5 years of extended support (10 years total)
Linux:
Linux is not always free, depending on the distribution you choose.
● CentOS
● Ubuntu
● Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
● Ubuntu Advantage
● SUSE Linux
Sizes
Instance Family:
● General Purpose - balanced VM
● Compute Optimized - double the CPU cores
● Memory Optimized - double the memory
● Storage Optimized - double the local storage
● GPU - access to a graphics processing unit
● High-Performance Compute - fastest everything
General Purpose - balanced VM
“Balanced CPU-to-memory ratio. Ideal for testing and development, small to medium
databases, and low to medium traffic web servers.”
● D Series
● A Series (non-critical)
● B Series (economical)
● DC Series (preview, confidential computing)
Payment Options
● Pay As You Go (PAYG) - charged by the minute
● Reserved VMs - a committment; pay for 1 or 3 years in advance, or paid monthly
● Spot Pricing - like an auction; bid on compute time only while available
● Hybrid Benefit - pay for Windows & SQL Server licenses through Enterprise
Agreement, likely cheaper
Notes
● Permanent Storage charged separately
● Public IP addresses have a cost
● Bandwidth into Azure (egress) has a cost
● Region chosen affects pricing
● Can get Windows VM images with SQL Server, Biztalk, Sharepoint or Machine
Learning Server preinstalled, for additional licensing cost
● Can get Linux VM images with SQL Server and Machine Learning Server
preinstalled, for additional licensing cost