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Upgrading SQL Server Cloud VMs

Brent Ozar recommends you check your cloud provider’s VM listings:

If you’ve been in Azure or Amazon for a few years, you’re probably on old, slow hardware.

In the last 3 weeks, I’ve had two clients who’d both been early cloud adopters. When they’d migrated to the cloud, they both used Azure Ev3 VMs – at the time, a good choice for SQL Server due to its relatively high amount of memory. When the Ev3 VM types were announced in 2017, they were hosted on Intel Broadwell and Haswell processors with 2.3-2.4GHz processing speed.

Also, even if you’re locked into a 1-year or 3-year deal, I know that at least Azure is usually willing to switch your VM class registration if you contact your support person. I’m not positive if AWS does the same but it wouldn’t shock me.