Something that has come from Microsoft in the last couple of months is the ability to provision an Azure Virtual Machine (VM) with fewer CPUs, than the machine has allocated to it. For example, by default a GS5 VM has 32 CPUs and 448 GB of memory. Let’s say you want to migrate your on-premises SQL Server that has 16 cores and 400 GB of RAM. Well, if you wanted to use a normal GS5, you would have to license an additional 16 cores of SQL Server (since you have all that RAM I’m assuming that you are using Enterprise Edition). Now, with this option, you can get a GS5 with only 16 (or 8) CPUs.

I can hear open source database professionals laughing at turning down CPUs, but this is a reality in many Oracle and SQL Server organizations, so Microsoft is doing us a favor. This doesn’t apply to all VM classes, and currently the pricing calculator does not show these options, however they are in the Azure portal when you select a new VM for creation. The costs of these VMs are the same as the fully allocated ones, though if you are renting your SQL Server licenses through Azure those costs are less.

This option is available on the D, E, G, and M series VMs, and mainly on the larger sizes in those series. If you would like to see cores reduced on other VM sizes, send feedback to Microsoft.