New smaller memory-intensive VM size in Azure

Previously, when you selected a VM size in Azure, you had to choose a large size to get a bunch of memory.

Now a new A5 size has been provided and you can get 14GB of memory on a VM that only has two virtual cores, rather than only on the 8 core servers that were available before. The pricing is about 2/3 of the price of the 8 core version.

This might be a good option for memory-intensive applications that aren’t CPU-intensive.