Azure VM Sizes – Meaning of Lowercase Letters Explained

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Azure offers various types of virtual machine sizes and they have uppercase letters (e.g. B, D, DC, E, F, etc). Some instance types also have lowercase letters (e.g. Da, Dd, Das, Ds, Ed, etc). Does that map to any specific functionality?

Best Answer

Azure uses the following naming convention for its VM sizes:

[Family] + [Sub-family]* + [# of vCPUs] + [Additive Features] + [Accelerator Type]* + [Version]

  • Family Indicates the VM Family Series

  • *Sub-family is used for specialized VM differentiations only

  • # of vCPUs denotes the number of vCPUs of the VM

  • Additive Features: One or more lower case letters denote additive features, such as:

    • a = AMD-based processor
    • d = disk (local temp disk is present); this is for newer Azure VMs, see Ddv4 and Ddsv4-series
    • h = hibernation capable
    • i = isolated size
    • l = low memory; a lower amount of memory than the memory intensive size
    • m = memory intensive; the most amount of memory in a particular size
    • t = tiny memory; the smallest amount of memory in a particular size
    • r = RDMA capable
    • s = Premium Storage capable, including possible use of Ultra SSD (Note: some newer sizes without the attribute of s can still support Premium Storage e.g. M128, M64, etc.)

  • *Accelerator Type denotes the type of hardware accelerator in the specialized/GPU SKUs.

  • Version denotes the version of the VM Family Series

More information:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/sizes

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/vm-naming-conventions

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