What is unit of Virtual machine's memory?

Question

In azure portal VM's memory is shown in GiB while its resource sku API has property MemoryGB.

What is actual memory unit of virtual memory?

Answer 1

Hi @Supriya,

Welcome to the Microsoft Q&A Platform! Thank you for asking your question here.

In Azure, the actual memory unit for virtual memory is shown in GiB on the portal, while the Resource SKU API uses GB. Both units are correct, but they follow different measurement systems (binary vs. decimal).

Azure uses gibibytes instead of gigabytes to avoid confusion and maintain consistency in memory measurement. Since computers operate using binary arithmetic, it's more logical to use binary multiples for memory. Using decimal multiples, like gigabytes, can create confusion and inconsistencies, particularly when dealing with large memory sizes.

Therefore, when viewing the memory size of a virtual machine in Azure, it will be displayed in gibibytes (GiB).

Both GB and GiB display storage capacity on a computer but one will display less available memory than the other. 

GB is the traditional metric style of measurement, where 1 GB equals 1,000³ bytes.

GiB is the binary method used by computers, where 1 GiB equals 1024³ bytes1

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