Microsoft Azure Adds Big Data, VM In Latest Updates

Microsoft announced several updates to Azure. Highlights of the updates include a new VM series with premium storage, a new Revolution R Enterprise VM, content pack updates for Power BI and SQL Server 2016 Community Technology Preview (CTP) 2.3.

Azure VMs can scale in size to suit most everyone’s needs. The “A series” has an offering with a shared core and 768 MB RAM, and both the “A” and “D” series can scale up to 16 cores and 112 GB RAM. The “G series” was brought online to service higher processing and RAM needs. G-series VMs can be scaled up to 32 cores and 448 GB of RAM.

The newest VM series to join Azure is “GS.” GS-series VMs have similar CPU and RAM to the previous G-series, but are specifically targeted for Premium Storage. At the highest levels, the GS-5, disk I/O per second (IOPS) can reach 80,000 with a maximum disk bandwidth of 2,000 MB per second.

Microsoft purchased Revolution Analytics in April 2015, and now we’re seeing some of the fruits of that purchase. With the newest version of Revolution R Enterprise, the technical previews are being made available directly as an Azure VM. R Enterprise VMs are available with either Windows or Linux as the underlying operating system.

SQL Server 2016 CTP 2.3 was just released, and for those of you looking to give it a try, you’ve got an easy way to do so. SQL Server 2016 provides new features, including row-level security for in-memory OLTP tables and general scalability and improvements. Testing couldn’t get any easier, with a SQL Server 2016 CTP 2.3 now available in the Azure VM quick create gallery.

Power BI Content Pack Updates: Microsoft continues to add content packs to the Power BI service, including Adobe Analytics, Azure Mobile Engagement and Webtrends. Adobe Analytics uses the Adobe Marketing Cloud to analyze customer data; Azure Mobile Engagement allows developers to track their application’s performance; and Webtrends helps companies observe and analyze the path visitors take across their various websites, social, mobile and SharePoint channels.