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Now released for general availability (GA), M-series and Fsv2-series are new hardware generations in Azure SQL Database specialized for workloads requiring very high compute or memory scale or very fast CPU speed.  M-series and Fsv2-series are supported for both single database and elastic pool deployments.  Gen5 hardware in SQL Database continues to provide balanced compute and memory option that is well-suited for typical workloads.   

 

M-series: memory optimized hardware  

M-series is a new memory optimized hardware option in SQL Database for workloads demanding more memory and higher compute limits than provided by Gen5.  M-series provides 29 GB per vcore and up to 128 vcores which increases the previous memory limit in SQL Database by 8x to nearly 4 TB.  Also, now available are smaller M-series compute sizes starting from 8 vcores on up for workloads requiring less total CPU and memory, but still providing the same high memory-to-vcore ratio for less cost. 

 

Fsv2-series: compute optimized hardware  

Fsv2-series is a new compute optimized hardware option in SQL Database delivering low CPU latency and high clock speed for the most CPU demanding workloads.  Depending on the workload, Fsv2-series can deliver more CPU performance per vcore than Gen5.  The 72 vcore size can also provide more CPU performance for less cost than 80 vcores on Gen5.  Also, now available are smaller Fsv2-series compute sizes starting from 8 vcores on up for workloads requiring less total CPU and memory, but still providing the same low CPU latency and high clock speed per vcore for less cost.  Note that Fsv2 provides less memory and tempdb per vcore than other hardware so workloads sensitive to those limits may want to consider Gen5 or M-series instead.   

 

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