At Microsoft Ignite, we’re rolling out major updates across our cloud and AI infrastructure.
At the heart of Microsoft’s AI enhancements is its infrastructure. It has been designed and custom built from the ground up to power some of the most used and demanding services in the world. While generative AI is now changing the way businesses operate, we have been on this journey for more than a decade, developing our infrastructure and designing our systems, and reshaping our approach from software to silicon. The end-to-end optimization that makes up our systems approach gives organizations the agility to deploy AI capable of transforming their operations and industries.
From agile startups to multinational corporations, Microsoft infrastructure offers more power, performance and cost-effectiveness options to help our customers continue to innovate. At Microsoft Ignite, we’re rolling out major updates across our cloud and AI infrastructure, from advances in chips and liquid cooling to new data integrations and more flexible cloud deployments.
Discover the latest silicon updates in Azure infrastructure
As part of our systems approach to optimizing every layer in our infrastructure, we continue to combine the best of the industry and innovate from our own unique perspectives. In addition to Azure Maia AI accelerators and Azure Cobalt central processing units (CPUs), Microsoft is expanding our own silicon portfolio to further enhance our infrastructure and provide greater efficiency and security. Azure Integrated HSM (hardware security module) is our latest in-house security chip, which is a dedicated hardware security module that strengthens key management to keep encryption and key signing within HSM boundaries without degrading performance or increasing latency. Starting next year, Azure Integrated HSM will be installed on every new server in Microsoft data centers to increase protection of the entire Azure hardware fleet for both confidential and general-purpose workloads.
We also introduce Azure Boost DPUour first internal DPU designed for high-efficiency, low-power data-centric workloads, able to absorb multiple traditional server components into a single dedicated silicon. We expect future DPU-equipped servers to run cloud storage workloads with three times the performance and four times the performance of existing servers.
With our next generation, we also continue to improve our cooling technology for GPUs and AI accelerators liquid cooling “sidekick” rack (heat exchanger unit) supporting artificial intelligence systems composed of silicon from leading manufacturers as well as our own. The unit can be retrofitted into Azure data centers to support the cooling of large-scale AI systems, such as those from NVIDIA including the GB200 in our AI infrastructure.
In addition to cooling, we’re optimizing how we deliver power more efficiently to meet the evolving demands of AI and hyperscale systems. We collaborated with Meta on a new one disaggregated power rack designwhich aims to increase flexibility and scalability as we introduce AI infrastructure into our existing data center. Each disaggregated power rack will be equipped with a 400V DC power supply that allows up to 35% more AI accelerators in each server rack, enabling dynamic power adjustments to meet the varying demands of AI workloads. We are making these cooling and power cabinet specifications freely available through the Open Compute Project so that the industry can benefit.
Azure AI Infrastructure builds on this innovation at the hardware and silicon layers to power some of the world’s most disruptive AI improvements, from revolutionary boundary models to large-scale generative inference. In October, we announced the launch of the ND H200 V5 Virtual Machine (VM) series, which uses the NVIDIA H200 GPU with improved memory bandwidth. Our continuous efforts to optimize the software across these VMs means that Azure delivers generational performance improvements. Between the NVIDIA H100 and H200 GPUs, this rate of performance improvement was twice the industry standard, as demonstrated across industry benchmarking.
We’re also excited to announce that Microsoft is bringing the NVIDIA Blackwell platform to the cloud. We are starting to preview these systems online, co-validate and co-optimize with NIVIDIA and other AI leaders. Azure ND GB200 v6 will be a new line of AI-optimized virtual machines and combines the NVIDIA GB200 NVL 72 rack design with a state-of-the-art Quantum InfiniBand network to connect tens of thousands of Blackwell GPUs to deliver AI supercomputing performance at scale. .
Today we’re also sharing our latest advancements in a CPU-based supercomputer, the Azure HBv5 Virtual Machine. Powered by AMD’s own EPYCTM Available only on Azure, the 9V64H processors will make these VMs up to eight times faster than the latest bare-metal and cloud alternatives for a variety of HPC workloads, and up to 35 times faster than on-premise servers at the end of their lifecycle. These performance improvements are made possible by 7 TB/s of memory bandwidth from High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) and the most scalable AMD EPYC server platform to date. Customers can now sign up for the HBv5 virtual machine preview that will begin in 2025.
Accelerating AI innovation through cloud migration and modernization
To get the most out of AI, organizations must integrate the data stored in their critical business applications. Migrating and modernizing these applications to the cloud helps enable this integration and pave the way for faster innovation while providing better performance and scalability. Choosing Azure means choosing a platform that natively supports all the mission-critical business applications and data you need to take full advantage of advanced technologies like AI. This includes your workloads on SAP, VMware and Oracle, as well as open-source software and Linux.
For example, thousands of customers run their SAP ERP applications in Azure, and we bring unique innovations to these organizations, such as the integration between Microsoft Copilot and the artificial intelligence assistant SAP Joule. Companies such as L’Oreal, Hilti, Unilever and Zeiss have migrated their mission-critical SAP workloads to Azure to innovate faster. And since the launch of Azure VMware Solution, we have been working to support customers around the world through geographic expansion. Azure VMware Solution is now available in 33 regions with support for portable VMware VCF subscriptions.
We are also constantly improving Oracle Database@Azure to better support our enterprise customers’ mission-critical Oracle workloads. Customers such as The Craneware Group and Vodafone have adopted Oracle Database@Azure to benefit from its high performance and low latency, allowing them to focus on streamlining their operations and access advanced security, data management and artificial intelligence capabilities in the Microsoft cloud . . Today we are announcing that Microsoft Purview supports Oracle Database@Azure for comprehensive data management and compliance capabilities that organizations can use to manage, secure and monitor data across Oracle workloads.
In addition, Oracle and Microsoft plan to provide Oracle Exadata Database Service on Exascale Infrastructure in Oracle Database@Azure for hyperelastic scaling and pay-per-use economics. In addition, we expanded the availability of Oracle Database@Azure to a total of nine regions and improved Microsoft Fabric integration with Open Mirroring capabilities.
To make it easier to migrate and modernize your applications to the cloud, starting today you can assess your application’s Azure readiness with Azure Migrate. The new application-centric approach provides technical and business insights to help you migrate an entire application with all dependencies as one.
Optimize your operations with an adaptive cloud for business growth
Azure’s multi-cloud and hybrid approach, or adaptive cloud, integrates separate teams, distributed locations, and disparate systems into a single model for operations, security, applications, and data. This enables organizations to leverage cloud-native and AI technologies to operate in hybrid, multi-cloud, edge and IoT environments. Azure Arc plays an important role in this approach by extending Azure services to any infrastructure and supporting organizations to manage their workloads and operations across multiple environments. Azure Arc now has over 39,000 customers across all industries, including La Liga, Coles and the World Bank.
We’re excited to introduce Azure Local, a new hybrid cloud-connected infrastructure that’s provisioned and managed in Azure. Azure Local combines the capabilities of Azure Stack into one unified platform. Azure Local using Azure Arc can run containers, servers, and Azure Virtual Desktop on Microsoft-certified hardware from Dell, HPE, Lenovo, and others. This opens up new possibilities to meet custom latency, near-real-time data processing, and compliance requirements. Azure Local comes with enhanced default security settings to protect your data and flexible configuration options such as GPU-enabled servers for AI inference.
We recently announced general availability Windows Server 2025with new features that include easier upgrades, advanced security, and capabilities enabled by AI and machine learning. In addition, Windows Server 2025 showcases subscription hotpatching enabled by Azure Arc, which will allow organizations to install updates with fewer restarts – a big time saver.
We also announce a preview SQL Server 2025an AI-ready enterprise database platform that leverages Azure Arc to deliver cloud agility anywhere. This new version continues its superior security and performance and has built-in AI that simplifies the development of AI applications and Patterns Augmented Generation (RAG) with safe, efficient and easy-to-use vector support. With Azure Arc, SQL Server 2025 offers cloud-based capabilities to help customers better manage, secure and manage SQL assets at scale, both on-premises and in the cloud.
Transform with Azure infrastructure to succeed in cloud and AI
A successful AI transformation starts with a powerful, secure and adaptive infrastructure strategy. And as you evolve, you need a cloud platform that adapts and adapts to your needs. Azure is the platform that provides the optimal environment to integrate your applications and data to start innovating with AI. When designing, deploying, and managing environments and workloads in Azure, you have access to best practices and industry-leading technical guidance to help you accelerate AI adoption and achieve your business goals.