Low network latency between virtual machines generally contributes to optimized performance. The proximity placement group feature in Azure ensures that virtual machines within the same proximity placement group are physically located in the same datacenter.

Proximity placement groups in Azure are particularly suitable for services and workloads (ERP, databases, real time services) with low latency requirements.

Existing virtual machines and availability groups can be placed into a proximity placement group after it has been created. For this, the virtual machines must be in the state “Stopped (deallocated)”. No further changes or adjustments to the virtual machines are needed.

Prerequisites and Licensing

No license is required for the Azure proximity placement group feature.

  • all virtual machines in a proximity placement group must be in the same Azure region
  • When using availability zones, all VMs must be in the same availability zone

Create a proximity placement group

The proximity placement group is created in the Azure Portal (https://portal.azure.com).

Click on all Services > Compute and select Proximity placement group

Click on Create

  1. Choose subscription and resource group
  2. Enter the name of the proximity placement group
  3. Select Azure Region (select the same Azure Region where the VMs are located, which will be added to the proximity placement group later).
  4. Continue to review the entries by clicking Review + Create

After successful review, the proximity placement group is created by clicking Create

After a short time the proximity placement group is created.

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Add virtual machine to the proximity placement group

Add new VM

During the deployment of a new virtual machine, it is added to a proximity placement group in the Advanced tab.

The proximity placement group can now be selected.

Add existing VM

For assignment to a proximity placement group, the VM must be in status Stopped (deallocated).
Select and shut down existing virtual machine.

Under Configuration, select an available proximity placement group and save configuration.

Add availability set

For assignment to a proximity placement group, all VMs in the availability set must be in the state Stopped (deallocated).
Select existing availability set.

Under Configuration, select an available proximity placement group and save configuration.


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