I received an email from Microsoft yesterday introducing two new compute-intensive instances in Windows Azure. They’re pretty powerful, and expensive. Not only is the processor and RAM way up there but you get a 40 Bbit/s InfiniBand network with RDMA! If your company needs this kind of server it’s available now in Windows Azure. Remember, if you deallocate a VM you don’t have to pay for the compute cycles. I do this often in my lab up in Azure to save money when I’m not doing anything.
Dear Customer,
Two new compute-intensive instances are now generally available for use with Windows Azure Cloud Services: 8 virtual cores with 56 GB of RAM, and 16 virtual cores with 112 GB of RAM.
Today we’re announcing the general availability (GA) of two new instances for use with Windows Azure Cloud Services. Called A8 and A9, they feature 8 virtual cores with 56 gigabytes (GB) and 16 virtual cores with 112 GB of memory, respectively.
A8 and A9 belong to a new category of instances called compute-intensive instances that provide faster processors and more virtual cores for higher compute power, larger amounts of memory, and a 40 Gbit/s InfiniBand network that includes remote direct memory access (RDMA) technology for maximum efficiency of parallel Message Passing Interface (MPI) applications.
The pricing for these new instances is shown in the table below.
| Compute instance | GA price per hour |
| Cloud Services A8 | $2.45 |
| Cloud Services A9 | $4.90 |
Compute-intensive instances are optimal for running compute and network-intensive applications such as high-performance cluster applications, applications using modeling, simulation and analysis, and video encoding. Please consider using the new A8 and A9 instances for running your compute and network-intensive applications.
For more information on using Windows Azure Cloud Services and pricing, please visit the Cloud Services website.
Thank you,
Windows Azure Team
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