desired). You can view the exact type of processor that your VM is using by looking in
Task Manager at the processor details. The exact cores will vary based on the VM
series, datacenter, and generation of the servers being used; my current virtual
machine is using Intel Xeon CPU E5-2673 v3 (Haswell) cores.
Notice that the different-sized virtual machines have different sizes for the temporary
storage disk, which can be used for any temporary data (think scratch space) that does
not need to be persisted (that is, sustained).
The Windows pagefile is also stored on this temporary storage. Anytime the VM is
moved, such as for patching, upgrades, or simply because of a node problem, the
contents of the temporary disk will be lost. Figure 12.7 shows the view of my
Minecraft Azure IaaS virtual machine, which has the standard 127GB operating
system disk, the 70GB temporary disk, and a 100GB data disk that I added.
Figure 12.7 Disk view within a Microsoft Azure IaaS virtual machine
Notice that the A8 is the same as the A10, and A9 is the same as A11. The difference is
that the A8 and A9 also have RDMA network adapters providing 40Gbps of bandwidth
between them, making them useful for high-performance computing solutions that
need massive pipes between the instances. The A10 and A11 don’t have the RDMA
network adapters. More information on these RDMA adapters can be found at
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/virtual-machines-
windows-a8-a9-a10-a11-specs/.
If you walked through the Minecraft tutorial, you will have noticed that you did not