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Azure Regions and VM Sizes help

Guidance from this tool's documentation.

Quick start

  1. Type a region (uksouth, West Europe, London) or open VM sizes and type a size (Standard_D4s_v5).
  2. Select a row to open it: a region shows its pair and codes, a size shows its name decoded and its specification.
  3. Copy the programmatic name or size name with the copy button beside it.

A link such as /azure-regions/uksouth or /azure-regions/Standard_D4s_v5 opens straight on that region or size.

Regions

  • Search matches the programmatic name, the display name, the geography, the area and the physical location.
  • Filter by area (Americas, Europe, Asia Pacific and so on), by geography, or to regions with availability zones.
  • Selecting a region shows its paired region, how many availability zones it has, and where it is.
  • Naming short code is the abbreviation this site's Azure Naming tool uses for the region (uks for UK South). It is a naming convention, not a Microsoft identifier, and newer regions may not have one yet.
  • A pair can be named without being in the list. Sweden South is Sweden Central's pair, but it is not a region you can deploy to, so it has no row of its own.
  • Restricted access marks regions Microsoft reserves for specific scenarios, such as disaster recovery within a geography.

The map

The map draws every region Microsoft publishes a position for. A filled marker has availability zones; a hollow one does not.

  • Select a marker to open that region. Its paired region gets a dashed ring and a line between the two.
  • Filtering the list zooms the map to what is left, so choosing an area or typing germany frames it.
  • Drag to move the map and use the buttons above it to zoom or reset. On a phone the map is taller than the world is wide, so it opens on Europe and Africa and you drag sideways for the rest.
  • Regions with no published position are listed under the map by name and can be opened from there. They are mostly the restricted pairs, such as Norway West and UAE Central.

Marker positions are Microsoft's own, from the data behind its datacentre globe. They mark the metropolitan area a region is named for, not a building. The map is drawn in the browser from a public-domain outline (Natural Earth), so no map tiles are requested and no third party sees your visit.

VM sizes

  • Search by size or series name. The Standard_ prefix is optional.
  • Filter by family prefix and by minimum vCPUs and memory. A size whose figure is not published never passes a minimum.
  • The table shows vCPUs, memory, local temporary storage, the data-disk limit, and whether the series supports accelerated networking and premium storage.

Reading a size name

Selecting a size, or typing a full name, decodes it using Microsoft's naming convention: family, subfamily, vCPUs, additive feature letters, accelerator type and version. In Standard_D4s_v5, D is the family, 4 the vCPUs, s means Premium SSD capable and v5 is the version.

  • The meaning of each letter is taken from Microsoft's naming-conventions article. A letter or segment that article does not list is shown as unlisted rather than guessed.
  • Older series such as Dv2 number their sizes instead of counting vCPUs: Standard_D3_v2 has four. When the published figure disagrees with the number in the name, the decoder says so.
  • A name that is not in the tables is still decoded, and marked as not published.

What is and is not covered

Covered:

  • Every region in Microsoft's public-cloud regions list.
  • A map position for the regions Microsoft's globe places.
  • The sizes tabulated in Microsoft's VM series articles, with series-level feature support.

Not covered:

  • Sovereign clouds (US Government, China).
  • A map position for the regions the globe does not place.
  • Which regions or zones offer a size.
  • Prices, quotas and capacity restrictions.

Regional availability and prices come from Azure's Resource SKUs and Retail Prices APIs. The first needs a signed-in subscription, so this tool does not attempt it. Use az vm list-skus --location <region> for a definitive answer.

A handful of rows carry typing mistakes from the source articles (a missing family letter, for example). They are kept as published rather than corrected by hand.

Privacy and saved data

Searches stay in the browser. The tool does not use localStorage and makes no network lookups.

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