Tuesday, December 5th 2017

Microsoft Azure Becomes First Global Cloud Provider to Deploy AMD EPYC

AMD today announced the first public cloud instances powered by the AMD EPYC processor. Microsoft Azure has deployed AMD EPYC processors in its datacenters in advance of preview for its latest L-Series of Virtual Machines (VM) for storage optimized workloads. The Lv2 VM family will take advantage of the high-core count and connectivity support of the AMD EPYC processor.

"We are extremely excited to be partnering with Microsoft Azure to bring the power of AMD EPYC processors into their datacenter," said Scott Aylor, corporate vice president and general manager of Enterprise Solutions. "There is tremendous opportunity for users to tap into the capabilities we can deliver across storage and other workloads through the combination of AMD EPYC processors on Azure. We look forward to the continued close collaboration with Microsoft Azure on future instances throughout 2018."
Corey Sanders, director of compute, Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Corp, said, "We're welcoming AMD's new EPYC processor to Microsoft Azure with the next generation of our L-Series Virtual Machines. The new Lv2-Series are High I/O, dense storage offerings which make EPYC perfect for Azure customers1 demanding workloads. We've enjoyed a deep collaboration with AMD on our next generation open source cloud hardware design called Microsoft's Project Olympus. We think Project Olympus will be the basis for future innovation between Microsoft and AMD, and we look forward to adding more instance types in the future benefiting from the core density, memory bandwidth and I/O capabilities of AMD EPYC processors."

The Lv2-Series instances run on the AMD EPYC 7551 processor, featuring a base core frequency of 2.2 GHz and a maximum single-core turbo frequency of 3.0 GHz. With support for 128 lanes of PCIe connections per processor, AMD provides over 33 percent more connectivity than available two-socket solutions to address an unprecedented number of NVMe drives directly.
The Lv2 VMs will be available starting at eight and ranging to 64 vCPU sizes, with the largest size featuring direct access to 4 TB of memory. These sizes will support Azure premium storage disks by default and will also support accelerated networking capabilities for the highest throughput of any cloud. With the unique capabilities enabled by AMD EPYC processors and Microsoft Azure, Lv2 is a perfect fit for storage-intensive workloads.

The Lv2-Series instances are based on Microsoft's Project Olympus design, first introduced just over a year ago as Microsoft's next generation hyperscale cloud hardware design. This groundbreaking design serves as a new model for open source hardware development with the Open Compute Project community.
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11 Comments on Microsoft Azure Becomes First Global Cloud Provider to Deploy AMD EPYC

#1
Steevo
I wonder how much of this is contractual sales based on Xbox chip sales.
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#2
Renald
I'm glad to see things change. Since they virtualize it for us, I look forward to see what happens to the pricing models.
Posted on Reply
#3
Imsochobo
SteevoI wonder how much of this is contractual sales based on Xbox chip sales.
I wonder why other major players are buying epyc too....
Posted on Reply
#4
jigar2speed
ImsochoboI wonder why other major players are buying epyc too....
I wonder why AMD exist.
Posted on Reply
#5
evernessince
jigar2speedI wonder why AMD exist.
Because customers buy their product. A business without sales won't be around very long. Same thing for any business. It's existence is validation enough of that.
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#6
Prima.Vera
SteevoI wonder how much of this is contractual sales based on Xbox chip sales.
Nah. It's just the good inter-companies relations they build, as you correctly said from XBOX, and also, most important the Price/performance ratio those CPUs achieve. Last but not least, the very likely huge discount AMD provided to MS , because let's face it, if you have huge customers like Amazon or Microsoft, it helps a lot increasing company's reputation translating in higher stocks and trust for AMD ;)
Posted on Reply
#7
LogitechFan
Let me guess, AMD is selling them at no cost to MS, and.... they also make Xbox chips for half the price while they are at it.

It sucks to be an underdog that everyone pushes around and spits upon.
Posted on Reply
#8
medi01
ImsochoboI wonder why other major players are buying epyc too....
Because it trounces Intel at given price point.
LogitechFanthey also make Xbox chips for half the price while they are at it.
Half of what price?
Posted on Reply
#9
jigar2speed
evernessinceBecause customers buy their product. A business without sales won't be around very long. Same thing for any business. It's existence is validation enough of that.
Guess you didn't get your sarcasm meter checked today.
Posted on Reply
#10
Jism
Fact: AMD did their homework on building the EPYC / Ryzen CPU's. It's paying off.

Thank you Keller.
Posted on Reply
#11
notb
JismFact: AMD did their homework on building the EPYC / Ryzen CPU's. It's paying off.

Thank you Keller.
It's not.
They simply have a competitive product for the first time in a while. Obviously, someone will choose it over Intel from time to time. And then it's just a matter of making a huge fuss about it and bang: now everyone thinks AMD will dominate the server segment.
What AMD needs is not a huge deal with MS (with whom they already have some serious partnership going on). They might not be making any money out of this (it's more likely they're loosing some).
They need a product for small/medium sized companies.

Servers based on EPYC are still pretty hard to find. HPE makes some low-end models. Dell AFAIK still hasn't officially launched anything (but they're already selling servers with new Intel Scalable).
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