At Databricks, we are constantly innovating and optimizing our platform to ensure that our customers can maximize the value of their data and AI investments. Today, we are excited to announce our support for the newly launched Azure Cobalt 100 Virtual Machines (VMs) for Azure Databricks, a major infrastructure upgrade delivering notable price-performance benefits. The integration of Azure Cobalt 100 VMs into our Databricks Data Intelligence Platform on Azure unlocks new possibilities for handling data-heavy workloads with greater efficiency, scalability, and cost-effectiveness.
Significant Price-Performance and Efficiency
The Azure Cobalt 100 VMs are built on Microsoft’s first 64-bit Arm-based CPU, designed in-house, and optimized to manage complex data workloads with greater ease. With up to 50% better price-performance compared to previous generations, Cobalt 100 VMs enable Databricks customers to benefit from superior performance and lower operating costs.
In addition, the Cobalt 100 VMs deliver up to 1.4x CPU performance and 2x performance on web servers and in-memory cache applications, enabling Azure Databricks users to process more data faster while keeping infrastructure costs in check.
Enhancing the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform on Azure
For customers using Azure Databricks for their data, analytics, and AI needs, Cobalt 100 VMs provide a significant boost in both performance and cost-efficiency. These VMs, built with Arm architecture, are designed to power scale-out, cloud-native solutions while delivering up to 40% better performance than the previous generation of Arm-based VMs. Customers using the classic Jobs offering on Azure Databricks can also leverage these benefits by selecting Cobalt 100 VMs as cluster nodes for their ETL jobs and batch processing.
Global Availability and Sustainability
The benefits of Azure Cobalt 100 VMs extend globally, with the VMs already deployed in Central US, East US 2, West Europe, Germany West Central, Japan East, and other major regions. As Microsoft continues to expand the availability of Cobalt 100 VMs in 2024, Azure Databricks customers can access these VMs across an even broader range of geographies, ensuring global reach and compliance with data sovereignty requirements.
Cobalt 100 VMs also bring sustainability benefits to Azure Databricks, with their energy-efficient Arm-based architecture, which reduces the power consumption of data operations. This enables Azure Databricks to optimize cloud infrastructure while delivering high performance.
A New Standard for Azure Databricks Performance
The general availability of Azure Cobalt 100 VMs marks an important milestone in our partnership with Microsoft, showcasing our joint efforts to provide best-in-class experiences for Azure Databricks customers. Whether running complex data analytics, accelerating ML workflows, or optimizing SQL queries, Cobalt 100 VMs offer the flexibility and power needed to drive business outcomes.
As we continue integrating Cobalt 100 VMs into our platform, we are committed to delivering ongoing enhancements and ensuring customers benefit from the latest infrastructure innovations. Ready to explore the capabilities of Azure Cobalt 100 VMs? Reach out to your Databricks account manager or contact us directly to learn more. You can also get started with an Azure Databricks free trial today.
