Recommended VM Types for an N2W Server in Azure

Summary

This article outlines the recommended virtual machine (VM) types for N2W Servers in Azure.

Description

The following are the recommended VM types for N2W Servers in Azure:

Up to 200 instances: Standard_A2_v2, Standard_B2s

Up to 500 instances: Standard_D2s_v3, Standard_D2ds_v4, Standard_F2s_v2, Standard_DC4s_v2, Standard_E2ds_v4, Standard_E2s_v3, Standard_D2ds_v5

Up to 1,000 instances: Standard_D4s_v3, Standard_D4ds_v4, Standard_F4s_v2, Standard_E4as_v4, Standard_E4ds_v4, Standard_E4s_v3, Standard_D4ds_v5

Up to 2,000 instances: Standard_D8s_v3, Standard_D8ds_v4, Standard_F8s_v2, Standard_E8s_v3, Standard_E8ds_v4, Standard_E8s_v3, Standard_D8ds_v5

Up to 4,000 instances: Standard_D16s_v3, Standard_D16ds_v4, Standard_F16s_v2, Standard_E32s_v3, Standard_E16ds_v4, Standard_E16s_v3, Standard_D16ds_v5

Over 4,000 instances: Please distribute additional instances to a new CPM Server.

Please consider the following notes:

1. N2W is more I/O-intensive than CPU-intensive; therefore, enhancing I/O performance will generally yield better results than increasing CPU performance.

2. N2W recommends the following guidelines for volumes:

• Volumes should be at least 10 GB in size.
• Volume types should be, at minimum, Premium SSD V2.

The above recommendations are based on the following assumptions:

1. Instances have an average of three volumes each.
2. No more than 20% of VMs have agents performing VSS/scripts.
3. No more than 20% of VMs are being backed up simultaneously (within 60 minutes of each other).

Exceeding these assumptions may necessitate larger instance sizes.

For environments with more than 200 VMs or 600 volumes, it may be necessary to increase IOPS. It is recommended to add an additional 500 IOPS for every 100 VMs or 300 volumes above this threshold.