Service limits and resource usage

This article describes the maximum supported limits of the Azure Private 5G Core solution and the hardware resources required. You should use this information to help choose the appropriate AP5GC service package and Azure Stack Edge hardware for your needs. Refer to Azure Private 5G Core pricing and Azure Stack Edge pricing for the package options and overage rates.

Service limits

The following table lists the maximum supported limits for a range of parameters in an Azure Private 5G Core deployment. These limits have been confirmed through testing, but other factors may affect what is achievable in a given scenario. For example, usage patterns, UE types and third-party network elements may impact one or more of these parameters. It is important to test the limits of your deployment before launching a live service.

Element Maximum supported Additional limits in a Highly Available (HA) deployment
PDU sessions 10,000 per Packet Core
Bandwidth Over 25 Gbps combined uplink and downlink per Packet Core
RAN nodes (eNB/gNB) 200 per Packet Core 50 per Packet Core
Active UEs 10,000 per Packet Core
SIMs 20,000 per Mobile Network
SIM provisioning 10,000 per JSON file via Azure portal, 4MB per REST API call

Your chosen service package may define lower limits, with overage charges for exceeding them - see Azure Private 5G Core pricing for details. If you require higher throughput for your use case, please contact us to discuss your needs.

Note

Management plane operations are handled by Azure Resource Manager (ARM) and are subject to rate limits. Understand how Azure Resource Manager throttles requests.

Azure Stack Edge virtual machine sizing

The following table lists the hardware resources that Azure Private 5G Core (AP5GC) uses when running on supported Azure Stack Edge (ASE) devices.

VM detail Flavor name vCPUs Memory (GiB) Disk size (GB) VM function
Management Control Plane VM Standard_F4s_v1 4 4 Ephemeral - 80 Management Control Plane to create Kubernetes clusters
AP5GC Cluster Control Plane VM Standard_F4s_v1 4 4 Ephemeral - 128 Control Plane of the Kubernetes cluster used for AP5GC
AP5GC Cluster Node VM Standard_F16s_HPN 16 32 Ephemeral - 128
Persistent - 102 GB
AP5GC workload node
Control plane upgrade reserve 0 (see note) 4 0 Used by ASE during upgrade of the control plane VM
Total requirements 24 44 Ephemeral - 336
Persistent - 102
Total - 438

Note

An additional four vCPUs are used during ASE upgrade. We do not recommend reserving these additional vCPUs because the ASE control plane software can contend with other workloads.

Remaining usable resources

The following table lists the resources available on supported ASE devices after deploying AP5GC. You can use these resources to deploy additional virtual machines or storage accounts, for example.

Resource Pro with GPU Pro 2 - 64G2T Pro 2 - 128G4T1GPU Pro 2 - 256G6T2GPU
vCPUs 16 8 8 8
Memory 52 GiB 4 GiB 52 GiB 180 GiB
Storage ~ 3.75 TB ~ 280 GB ~ 1.1 TB ~ 2.0 TB

For the full device specifications, see: