Azure Updates - Latest from Azure Charts

Ephemeral OS Disk with full caching for VM/VMSS

Mon, 30 Mar 2026 21:45:47 Z

Ephemeral OS Disk with full caching is now available in public preview for Azure VM/VMSS, bringing significantly faster and more reliable OS disk performance to your workloads. By caching the entire OS disk image on local VM storage (cache disk, resource
Update Type: Preview, Services: Virtual Machines, VM Scale Sets, Categories: Features

Public Preview: Ephemeral OS Disk with full caching for VM/VMSS

Mon, 30 Mar 2026 12:37:00 Z

Today, we’re excited to announce the public preview of Ephemeral OS disk with full caching, a new feature designed to significantly enhance performance and reliability by utilizing local storage. Thi...
Update Type: Preview, Services: Virtual Machines, VM Scale Sets, Categories:

Public Preview: Automatic zone balance for Virtual Machine Scale Sets

Tue, 17 Feb 2026 09:30:00 Z

We're excited to announce the public preview of automatic zone balance for Azure Virtual Machine Scale Sets. This new capability helps you maintain zone-resilient workloads with zero manual inter...
Update Type: Preview, Services: Virtual Machines, VM Scale Sets, Categories:

Private Preview: Azure Managed Prometheus on VM / VMSS

Thu, 11 Dec 2025 22:01:00 Z

Announcing private preview support for Azure Managed Prometheus on VM/VMSS, enabling unified monitoring with GPU, InfiniBand, and node-level metrics for HPC workloads.
Update Type: Preview, Services: Virtual Machines, VM Scale Sets, Categories:

Sharing Capacity Reservation Groups

Mon, 20 Oct 2025 17:15:20 Z

The ability to share Capacity Reservation Groups (CRGs) with subscriptions is now in Public Preview. Previously, customers could deploy VMs in a Capacity Reservation Group within the same subscription only. On-demand Capacity Reservation Group (CRG) can
Update Type: Preview, Services: Virtual Machines, VM Scale Sets, Categories: Features, Services, Pricing & Offerings

Soft Delete feature in Azure Compute Gallery

Tue, 30 Sep 2025 19:30:35 Z

The Soft Delete feature in Azure Compute Gallery lets you recover accidentally deleted images within a 7-day retention period. This grace period gives users time to restore any images that were mistakenly deleted. Learn more.
Update Type: Preview, Services: Virtual Machines, VM Scale Sets, Categories: Features, Services

Azure Disk Encryption

Wed, 24 Sep 2025 11:45:14 Z

Azure Disk Encryption will be retired on September 15, 2028 and we recommend you transition to Encryption at Host by that date. Alternate disk encryption solutions such as Encryption At Host and CVM OS disk encryption offer broader operating system supp
Update Type: Deprecation, Services: Virtual Machines, VM Scale Sets, Categories: Retirements

Private Preview: Enable Trusted launch on existing Virtual machine Flex scale set

Thu, 10 Jul 2025 14:45:50 Z

Announcing preview support to enable Trusted launch on existing Virtual machine Flex scale set by upgrading the scale set resource to Gen2-Trusted launch. This will help improve the foundational security of existing Azure Virtual machine Flex scale set re
Update Type: Preview, Services: Virtual Machines, VM Scale Sets, Categories: Features, Security, Services

Enable Trusted launch on existing Virtual machine Uniform scale set

Thu, 10 Jul 2025 14:45:50 Z

Announcing general availability of support to enable Trusted launch on existing Virtual machine Uniform scale sets by upgrading the scale set resource to Gen2-Trusted launch. This will help improve the foundational security of existing Azure Virtual machi
Update Type: GA, Services: Virtual Machines, VM Scale Sets, Categories: Features, Security, Services

Trusted launch default for new Gen2 VMs & Scale sets

Thu, 10 Jul 2025 14:45:50 Z

Announcing public preview for key security enhancement in Azure: Trusted Launch as default (TLaD) for new deployments of Gen2 Virtual Machines (VMs), Virtual Machine Scale Sets (Scale set) and Azure Compute Gallery (ACG) resources. This will help enhance
Update Type: Preview, Services: Virtual Machines, VM Scale Sets, Categories: Features, Security, Services

General Availability: Custom Metrics for Rolling Upgrades on Virtual Machine Scale Sets

Tue, 03 Jun 2025 16:27:00 Z

We’re excited to announce the general availability of custom metrics for rolling upgrades on Virtual Machine Scale Sets (VMSS). This feature allows you to use the application health extension to emit...
Update Type: GA, Services: Virtual Machines, VM Scale Sets, Categories:

Public Preview: Use Spot Instances in Standby Pools for Virtual Machine Scale Sets

Wed, 14 May 2025 18:00:00 Z

We’re thrilled to announce the public preview of Azure Spot Virtual Machines in Standby Pools for Virtual Machine Scale Sets (VMSS)—a powerful new capability that combines the elasticity of standby p...
Update Type: Preview, Services: Virtual Machines, VM Scale Sets, Categories:

Public Preview: Hibernated VMs in Standby Pools for Virtual Machine Scale Sets

Wed, 14 May 2025 18:00:00 Z

We’re excited to announce the public preview of hibernated virtual machines in standby pools for Azure Virtual Machine Scale Sets (VMSS)—a new capability designed to reduce scale-out latency while op...
Update Type: Preview, Services: Virtual Machines, VM Scale Sets, Categories:

General Availability: Instance Mix for Virtual Machine Scale Sets with Flexible Orchestration Mode

Tue, 22 Apr 2025 18:02:00 Z

Instance mix for Virtual Machine Scale Sets using Flexible Orchestration Mode is now Generally Available.
Update Type: GA, Services: Virtual Machines, VM Scale Sets, Categories:

Instance Mix for Virtual Machine Scale Sets

Tue, 22 Apr 2025 17:30:32 Z

We are excited to announce the general availability of instance mix, a new feature designed to optimize your Virtual Machine Scale Set deployments. Instance mix allows you to specify multiple VM sizes within a single Virtual Machine Scale Set, providing
Update Type: GA, Services: Virtual Machines, VM Scale Sets, Categories: Features

Custom Secure Boot UEFI Keys for Azure Trusted Launch VM

Wed, 05 Mar 2025 13:45:34 Z

Trusted Launch VM now supports customizing secure boot UEFI keys. One or more of the secure boot keys and/or databases (PK, KEK, DB, or DBX) can be fully replaced or updated. This allows additional flexibility to further secure workloads using Trusted Lau
Update Type: GA, Services: Virtual Machines, VM Scale Sets, Categories: Features, Compliance, Security

Public Preview: Resilient Create and Delete on Virtual Machine Scale Sets

Tue, 19 Nov 2024 20:17:00 Z

Update Type: Preview, Services: Virtual Machines, VM Scale Sets, Categories:

General Availability Announcement: VMSS Zonal Expansion

Tue, 19 Nov 2024 18:30:00 Z

Update Type: GA, Services: Virtual Machines, VM Scale Sets, Categories:

VMSS Zonal Expansion

Tue, 19 Nov 2024 17:00:35 Z

We are pleased to announce that the Azure VMSS Zonal Expansion feature is now generally available. This significant enhancement allows customers to transition their virtual machine scale sets from a regional to zonal resiliency strategy or add additional
Update Type: GA, Services: Virtual Machines, VM Scale Sets, Categories: Features

Resilient create and delete on Virtual Machine Scale Sets

Tue, 19 Nov 2024 17:00:35 Z

We’re excited to announce our new feature that increases virtual machine create and delete success in your scale sets. Resilient create and delete initiates auto-recovery from failed create and deletes by performing retries of those operations on your beh
Update Type: Preview, Services: Virtual Machines, VM Scale Sets, Categories: Features

Custom metrics for rolling upgrades on Virtual Machine Scale Sets

Tue, 19 Nov 2024 17:00:35 Z

Custom metrics for rolling upgrades enables you to utilize the application health extension to emit custom metrics to your Virtual Machine Scale Set. These custom metrics can be used to tell the scale set the order in which virtual machines should be upda
Update Type: Preview, Services: Virtual Machines, VM Scale Sets, Categories: Features

MaxSurge on Virtual Machine Scale Sets

Tue, 19 Nov 2024 17:00:35 Z

Rolling upgrades with MaxSurge for Virtual Machine Scale Sets is now generally available. Rolling upgrades with MaxSurge can help improve service uptime during upgrade events. With MaxSurge enabled, new instances are created in batches using the latest s
Update Type: GA, Services: Virtual Machines, VM Scale Sets, Categories: Features

Upgrade Policies on Virtual Machine Scale Sets with Flexible Orchestration

Tue, 19 Nov 2024 17:00:35 Z

Upgrade policies allow for more granular control over the upgrade process, ensuring that your services remain available and responsive during updates. The available upgrade policies are: Automatic, Manual, and Rolling. Automatic upgrade policy: the scale
Update Type: GA, Services: Virtual Machines, VM Scale Sets, Categories: Services

General Availability: MaxSurge for Virtual Machine Scale Sets

Tue, 19 Nov 2024 13:30:00 Z

Update Type: GA, Services: Virtual Machines, VM Scale Sets, Categories:

Public Preview: Custom metrics for rolling upgrades on Virtual Machine Scale Sets

Tue, 19 Nov 2024 13:30:00 Z

Update Type: Preview, Services: Virtual Machines, VM Scale Sets, Categories:

General Availability: Standby Pools for Virtual Machine Scale Sets with Flexible Orchestration

Tue, 19 Nov 2024 13:30:00 Z

Update Type: GA, Services: Virtual Machines, VM Scale Sets, Categories:

General Availability: Upgrade Policies on Virtual Machine Scale Sets with Flexible Orchestration

Tue, 19 Nov 2024 13:30:00 Z

Update Type: GA, Services: Virtual Machines, VM Scale Sets, Categories:

Standby Pools for Virtual Machine Scale Sets with Flexible Orchestration

Mon, 18 Nov 2024 13:30:07 Z

Standby Pools for Virtual Machine Scale Sets with Flexible Orchestration is now generally available. Standby pools for Virtual Machine Scale Sets enables you to increase scaling performance by creating a pool of pre-provisioned virtual machines. The virt
Update Type: GA, Services: Virtual Machines, VM Scale Sets, Categories: Features

VMSS- Reimage-Activity logs analysis

Thu, 14 Nov 2024 12:44:00 Z

VMSS- Reimage-Activity logs analysis
Update Type: Announcement, Services: Virtual Machines, VM Scale Sets, Categories:

Breaking Change for VM & VMSS PowerShell/CLI Customers

Thu, 31 Oct 2024 00:00:00 Z

Starting November 2023, Trusted Launch will be set as default security type for new VMs, VMSS and OS disks created using Azure PowerShell and CLI.
Update Type: Announcement, Services: Virtual Machines, VM Scale Sets, Categories:

Announcing Public Preview of new attach/detach disks API for VMs/VMSS

Fri, 18 Oct 2024 09:47:35 Z

We are excited to announce the public preview of a new API that will make attaching and detaching disks to a VM faster and easier. The new API is designed to reduce the number of API calls and the latency involved in disk operations. It simplifies the inputs required to attach disks and allows multiple disks to be attached/detached in one request. The new API is compatible with single instance VMs, VMSS Uniform and VMSS Flex. The new API offers several advantages over the existing disk management API. Here are some of the benefits you can expect from using the new API: Faster and more efficient: The new API reduces the number of API calls and the latency involved in attaching and detaching disks. For example, you can mention only the disk that needs to be attached/detached and don’t need to mention the LUN number. It helps you avoid the GET API call required for getting the list of all disks & LUN numbers being used. Easier and more intuitive: The new API simplifies the disk management workflow by allowing you to attach and detach multiple disks in one request, and by reducing the input parameters. Separate Throttling limits – Currently, customers need to make Update VM API requests to attach/detach a disk and there is a limit of max 12 requests per VM per min. With this new API, customers will get additional quota of X requests per VM per min, in addition to the 12 requests already available for Update VM API. One of the most common tasks for cloud users is to manage their disk resources. Whether you need to add more storage, backup your data, or migrate to a different instance, you need to attach and detach disks from your virtual machines. This new API is designed to reduce the number of API calls and the latency involved in disk operations. The new API is available as a RESTful endpoint that you can access from any programming language or tool. Since API is in Public Preview, there are no SLA guarantees on the API. How to use the API? POST https:
Update Type: Preview, Services: Virtual Machines, VM Scale Sets, Categories: Management

VM watch for Azure VMs

Thu, 17 Oct 2024 07:00:00 Z

Public Preview: VM watch – Enhancing VM Health Monitoring VM watch, now in preview, is a standardized, lightweight, and adaptable in-VM service offering for virtual machines and virtual machine scale sets. It runs health checks within the VM at configurab
Update Type: Preview, Services: Virtual Machines, VM Scale Sets, Categories: Pricing & Offerings

New FX series VMs - FXmsv2 and FXmdsv2

Thu, 26 Sep 2024 07:00:00 Z

Azure is proud to announce newest additions to the FX subfamily of VMs, the FXmsv2 FXmdsv2 series, powered by the 5th Generation Intel® Xeon® Platinum 8473C (Emerald Rapids) processor in a hyper threaded configuration, ideal for memory and compute intensi
Update Type: Preview, Services: Virtual Machines, VM Scale Sets, Categories: Pricing & Offerings

Retirement: Azure Load Balancer Inbound NAT rule V1 for Azure VMs and Azure VMSS will be retired

Thu, 26 Sep 2024 00:00:00 Z

Migrate to Azure Load Balancer Inbound NAT rule V2 by September 30, 2027.
Update Type: Deprecation, Services: Load Balancer, Virtual Machines, VM Scale Sets, Categories: Retirements

VMSS Automatic Instance Repairs – Reimage, Restart Repair Actions

Thu, 05 Sep 2024 07:00:00 Z

Automatic instance repairs help Virtual Machine Scale Set customers achieve high application availability by automatically detecting and recovering unhealthy VM instances at runtime.We are excited to announce that customers can now choose between Replace,
Update Type: GA, Services: Virtual Machines, VM Scale Sets, Categories: Features

Generally Available: VMSS Automatic Instance Repairs – Reimage, Restart Repair Actions

Thu, 05 Sep 2024 00:00:00 Z

We are excited to announce that customers can now choose between Replace, Reimage (New), or Restart (New) as the default repair action performed in response to an "Unhealthy" application signal.
Update Type: GA, Services: Virtual Machines, VM Scale Sets, Categories: Features

Announcing Public Preview of Instance Mix on Virtual Machine Scale Sets

Thu, 22 Aug 2024 16:47:34 Z

Today, we’re excited to announce that the ability to specify multiple different VM sizes in your Virtual Machine Scale Sets (VMSS) with Flexible Orchestration Mode with Instance Mix. This new capability allows you to specify up to five different VM sizes to use in your VMSS deployments. Not only does this simplify the management of your scale sets, but it also allows you to optimize your deployments for either price or capacity through allocation strategies. Benefits Single API call: In one API call, you can specify and deploy up to five VM sizes in your scale sets. Optimized deployments: You can optimize for the available capacity in Azure regions/zones with CapacityOptimized for more confidence that you’ll get the capacity requested. For cost-sensitive customers who want to still utilize capacity signals, the LowestPrice allocation strategy takes both factors into account. Automated allocation: By using allocation strategies, let Azure determine which of the specified VMs are most readily available and most cost efficient. Easily scale with a mix of VM offerings: When using Spot Priority Mix, you can deploy a heterogeneous mix of VM sizes of both Spot and On-Demand pricing in your scale sets. Simplified management: You can now have the scale set deploy multiple different VM sizes, as opposed to manually deploying different VMs into the scale set. Attain needed capacity: By utilizing a diversified mix of VM sizes, you can tap into a greater pool of capacity, increasing your ability to get the capacity you need. What’s new VMSS Instance Mix introduces a few new properties to the VMSS API including: skuProfile: an umbrella property for the list of vmSizes and allocationStrategy. vmSizes: the list of VM sizes to be deployed. allocationStrategy: the property specify their allocation strategy. There are currently two options, LowestPrice and CapacityOptimized LowestPrice: when evaluating what VM size split to use, Azure will first look at the lowest priced VM
Update Type: Preview, Services: Virtual Machines, VM Scale Sets, Categories: Management, Pricing & Offerings, Regions & Datacenters

Attach and detach of VMs on Virtual Machine Scale Sets for a single fault domain

Thu, 22 Aug 2024 07:00:00 Z

With attach and detach support for Virtual Machines (VMs), you can easily bring your existing VMs to Virtual Machine Scale Sets (VMSS) with Flexible Orchestration Mode and a fault domain count of 1. After attaching a VM to the VMSS, it’s considered as par
Update Type: GA, Services: Virtual Machines, VM Scale Sets, Categories: Services

Instance Mix on Virtual Machine Scale Sets

Thu, 22 Aug 2024 07:00:00 Z

We are excited to announce the public preview of Instance Mix, a new feature designed to optimize your Virtual Machine Scale Set (VMSS) deployments. Instance Mix allows you to specify multiple VM sizes within a single Virtual Machine Scale Set (VMSS), pro
Update Type: Preview, Services: Virtual Machines, VM Scale Sets, Categories: Services

Public Preview: Instance Mix on Virtual Machine Scale Sets

Thu, 22 Aug 2024 00:00:00 Z

You can now specify multiple different VM sizes and an allocation strategy in Virtual Machine Scale Sets with flexible orchestration mode.
Update Type: Preview, Services: Virtual Machines, VM Scale Sets, Categories: Services

Public Preview: Attach and detach of VMs on Virtual Machine Scale Sets for a single fault domain

Thu, 22 Aug 2024 00:00:00 Z

The ability to attach and detach of Virtual Machines on Virtual Machine Scale Sets with a fault domain count of 1 is now generally available.
Update Type: Preview, Services: Virtual Machines, VM Scale Sets, Categories: Services

Announcing General Availability of Attach & Detach of Virtual Machines on Virtual Machine Scale Sets

Mon, 12 Aug 2024 22:21:57 Z

Today, we’re thrilled to announce that the ability to attach or detach Virtual Machines (VMs) to and from a Virtual Machine Scale Set (VMSS) with no downtime is Generally Available. This functionality is available for scale sets with Flexible Orchestration Mode with a Fault Domain Count of 1. Benefits Let Azure do the work: Easily move from a single VM to VMSS Flex and make use of all the benefits that come from scale sets, like Autoscale, Auto OS Upgrades, Spot Priority Mix, Instance Repairs, and Upgrade Policies. Easily scale: By attaching an existing VM to an existing VMSS Flex, you can grow your Compute without having to rebuild it from scratch. No downtime: You can attach running VMs to a scale set with no downtime, thereby creating a frictionless experience to make use of scale sets. Isolated troubleshooting: Should you need more detailed troubleshooting of a VM, you can now detach the VM to isolate it from the scale set. Easily move VMs: Using the feature, you can easily move VMs between scale sets to ensure your VMs are grouped the way you want them to be. When the VM and VMSS meet all the qualifications, you can quickly attach the VM to the scale set by updating the VM to use the VMSS ID. You can attach VMs through the REST API, Azure Portal, Azure CLI, or Azure PowerShell. For example, using PowerShell: #Get VM information $vm = Get-AzVM -ResourceGroupName $resourceGroupName -Name $vmName ` #Get scale set information $vmss = Get-AzVmss -ResourceGroupName $resourceGroupName -Name $vmssName ` #Update the VM with the scale set ID Update-AzVM -ResourceGroupName $resourceGroupName -VM $vm -VirtualMachineScaleSetId $vmss.Id Conversely, to detach the VM from the scale set, you simply need to update the VM to no longer use a VMSS ID: #Get VM information $vm = Get-AzVM -ResourceGroupName $resourceGroupName -Name $vmName #Update the VM with the new scale set refence of $null Update-AzVM -ResourceGroupName $resourceGroupName -VM $vm -VirtualMachineScaleSe
Update Type: GA, Services: Virtual Machines, VM Scale Sets, Categories:

Public Preview: Upgrade Policies for Virtual Machine Scale Sets with Flexible Orchestration

Fri, 05 Jul 2024 00:00:00 Z

Upgrade Policies help ensure your virtual machines in your scale set remain up to date with the latest scale set model.
Update Type: Preview, Services: Virtual Machines, VM Scale Sets, Categories: Features, Security, Management

Public Preview: Upgrade Policies for Virtual Machine Scale Sets with Flexible Orchestration

Thu, 20 Jun 2024 16:47:53 Z

Status: In Preview The upgrade policy of a Virtual Machine Scale Set determines how virtual machines can be brought up to date with the latest scale set model. Before today, upgrade policies were available for Virtual Machine Scale Sets with Uniform Orchestration. Now the same upgrade policies available for Uniform Orchestration are available for Virtual Machine Scale Sets with Flexible Orchestration. The upgrade policies available for Virtual Machine Scale Sets are Automatic, Manual and Rolling. Additionally, if using a Rolling upgrade policy, you can choose to enable MaxSurge to create new instances with the updated scale set model to replace virtual machines using the old model. Automatic upgrade policy With an automatic upgrade policy, the scale set makes no guarantees about the order of virtual machines being brought down. The scale set might take down all virtual machines at the same time to perform upgrades. Automatic upgrade policy is best suited for DevTest scenarios where you aren't concerned about the uptime of your instances while making changes to configurations and settings. Manual upgrade policy With a manual upgrade policy, you choose when to update the scale set instances. Nothing happens automatically to the existing virtual machines when changes occur to the scale set model. New instances that are added to the scale set, utilize the most update to date models available. Manual upgrade policy is best suited for workloads where you require more control over when and how instances are updated. Rolling Upgrade Policy + MaxSurge With a rolling upgrade policy, the scale set performs updates in batches. You also get more control over the upgrades with settings like batch size, max healthy percentage, prioritizing unhealthy instances and enabling upgrades across availability zones. Additionally, you can enable MaxSurge which will create new virtual machines to replace virtual machines running in the old model. Using MaxSurge ensures your scale set does not see any reduced capacity
Update Type: Preview, Services: Virtual Machines, VM Scale Sets, Categories:

Announcing the Public Preview of Upgrade Policies for Virtual Machine Scale Sets with Flexible Orche

Tue, 18 Jun 2024 17:04:13 Z

Today we are announcing the public preview of upgrade policies for Virtual Machine Scale Sets with Flexible Orchestration. Upgrade policies allow for more granular control over the upgrade process, ensuring that your services remain available and responsive during updates. Automatic upgrade policy With an automatic upgrade policy, the scale set makes no guarantees about the order of virtual machines being brought down. The scale set might take down all virtual machines at the same time to perform upgrades. Automatic upgrade policy is best suited for DevTest scenarios where you aren't concerned about the uptime of your instances while making changes to configurations and settings. Manual upgrade policy With a manual upgrade policy, you choose when to update the scale set instances. Nothing happens automatically to the existing virtual machines when changes occur to the scale set model. New instances added to the scale set use the most update-to-date model available. Manual upgrade policy is best suited for workloads where you require more control over when and how instances are updated. Rolling upgrade policy With a rolling upgrade policy, the scale set performs updates in batches. You also get more control over the upgrades with settings like batch size, max healthy percentage, prioritizing unhealthy instances and enabling upgrades across availability zones. Additionally, Rolling has the option to enable MaxSurge. MaxSurge deploys new instances running the latest model to replace instances using the old model. MaxSurge allows customers to maintain their full scale set capacity during the upgrade process, ensuring the entirety of their scale set is available to receive traffic Rolling upgrade policy is best suited for production workloads that require a set number of instances always be available. Rolling upgrades is safest way to upgrade instances to the latest model without compromising availability and uptime. Key Benefits Keep scale set instan
Update Type: Preview, Services: Virtual Machines, VM Scale Sets, Categories: Services

Announcing the Public Preview of Standby Pools for Virtual Machine Scale Sets

Tue, 28 May 2024 22:46:23 Z

We recently announced the public preview of Standby Pools for Virtual Machine Scale Sets with Flexible Orchestration. Standby Pools is a new service that enables you to increase your scaling performance by creating a pool of pre-provisioned virtual machines from which your scale can pull from when scaling out. Standby pools reduce the time to scale out by performing various initialization steps such as installing applications/ software or loading substantial amounts of data. These initialization steps are performed on the virtual machines in the standby pool before to being moved into the scale set. There is more to quickly scaling out than simply receiving a virtual machine. Standby pools are designed for customers not only looking to get a VM as quickly as possible, but also for the customers who need the time to get their VM setup and configured before it receives any work. With Standby Pools, all the work you normally would do after receiving a virtual machine can be completed in the pool. This helps ensure the VMs in your scale set are the ones handling the work while your pooled VMs are ready at a moment’s notice. When it is time to scale up, any scale up event will automatically pull a VM from the pool. If your VM is in a running state, it is immediately ready for work. If you are using deallocated VMs to save costs, we automatically move the VM from the pool into the scale set and start it. With deallocated VMs, the only latency you experience is from the time the VM is shutdown to when it is running. There is no additional waiting for your application to install or running scripts to download binaries. These steps were already done in the pool. When it comes time to scale your scale set back down, the pool will automatically refill to maintain the maxReadyCapacity configured. This ensures that you always maintain a safe balance of VMs in your scale set and VMs in your standby pool. Key Benefits Saving time by completing post provisioning st
Update Type: Preview, Services: Virtual Machines, VM Scale Sets, Categories: Services

Public preview: Standby pools for Virtual Machine Scale Sets with flexible orchestration

Tue, 07 May 2024 00:00:00 Z

Standby Pools for Virtual Machine Scale Sets with Flexible Orchestration provides the ability to reduce scale out latency and increase scale out performance.
Update Type: Preview, Services: Virtual Machines, VM Scale Sets, Categories: Features

Public Preview of Attach and Detach of Virtual Machines on Virtual Machine Scale Sets

Wed, 15 Nov 2023 22:43:06 Z

Today, we’re making it possible to attach a running Virtual Machine (VM) to an existing Virtual Machine Scale Set (VMSS) with no downtime. VMSS customers can now also detach a VM with minimal to no downtime. Attach and detach actions are available for scale sets with Flexible Orchestration Mode with a Fault Domain Count of 1. Benefits Let Azure do the work: Easily move from a single VM to VMSS Flex and make use of all the benefits that come from scale sets, like Autoscale, Automatic OS Upgrades, Spot Priority Mix, Instance Repairs, and Upgrade Policies. Easily scale: By attaching an existing VM to an existing VMSS Flex, you can grow your Compute architecture without having to rebuild it from scratch. No downtime: You can attach running VMs to a scale set with no downtime, thereby creating a frictionless experience to make use of scale sets. Isolation: Should you need more detailed troubleshooting of a VM, you can now detach the VM to isolate it from the scale set. When the VM and the VMSS meet all the qualifications, you can quickly attach the VM to the scale set by updating the VM to use the VMSS ID. Use the REST API, Azure Portal, Azure CLI, or Azure PowerShell to update the VMSS ID parameter on the VM. For example, using PowerShell: #Get VM information $vm = Get-AzVM -ResourceGroupName $resourceGroupName -Name $vmName #Get scale set information $vmss = Get-AzVmss -ResourceGroupName $resourceGroupName -Name $vmssName #Update VM to include the VMSS ID $vm.VirtualMachineScaleSetId = $vmss.Id #Update the VM Update-AzVM -ResourceGroupName $resourceGroupName -VM $vm Likewise, to detach the VM, you simply need to update the VM to no longer have a VMSS ID associated with it: #Get VM information $vm = Get-AzVM -ResourceGroupName $resourceGroupName -Name $vmName #Update the VM with the new scale set refence of $null Update-AzVM -ResourceGroupName $resourceGroupName -VM $vm -VirtualMachineScaleSetId $null Attach and detach of VMs
Update Type: Preview, Services: Virtual Machines, VM Scale Sets, Categories:

Public Preview: Attach and VMs to and from Existing Virtual Machine Scale Sets

Wed, 15 Nov 2023 00:00:00 Z

You can now easily bring existing VMs to an existing Virtual Machine Scale Set with Flexible Orchestration Mode to take advantage of the scaling orchestrations offered by scale sets. You can now detach a VM from the scale set for isolation and troubleshooting.
Update Type: Preview, Services: Virtual Machines, VM Scale Sets, Categories: Features

Public Preview: VMSS Automatic Instance Repairs - Reimage, Restart Repair Actions

Tue, 17 Oct 2023 00:00:00 Z

New recovery options available on automatic instance repairs provides the capability for less-disruptive repair actions on sensitive workloads.
Update Type: Preview, Services: Virtual Machines, VM Scale Sets, Categories: Features

Breaking Change Notice: Virtual Machine Scale Set Default Orchestration Mode changing from Uniform to Flexible on PowerShell, Azure CLI

Wed, 11 Oct 2023 00:00:00 Z

Starting November 2023, Virtual Machine Scale Sets created on PowerShell and Azure CLI will automatically default to Flexible orchestration mode.
Update Type: Announcement, Services: Virtual Machines, VM Scale Sets, Categories: Features

Public Preview Announcement: Azure VMSS Zonal Expansion

Mon, 09 Oct 2023 21:30:00 Z

Authors: Jerry Steele, Senior Product Manager We're thrilled to introduce the public preview of VMSS Zonal Expansion. This feature enables you to take regionally (non-zonal) configured VMs and distribute across Azure availability zones in a zonal configuration, enhancing your business continuity and resilience with minimal disruption and potentially increasing your availability SLA from 99.95% to 99.99%. Azure availability zones are distinct data centers within a region, each with its unique power, network, and cooling system. Azure ensures the highest SLA guarantees for VMs distributed across multiple availability zones, otherwise known as a zonal redundant configuration. Previously, migrating VMs from a non-zonal configuration to a zonal or zone redundant configuration was manual, time-consuming, and led to significant app downtime. Our new features simplify the end to end process for migrating your VM infrastructure to span availability zones. This feature allows you to modify a virtual machine scale set (VMSS) to expand the set of zones over which to spread VM instances. New instances will be evenly and explicitly spread across availability zones, allowing you to update your scale set environment to the Azure recommended zone-redundant availability strategy without deleting and recreating instances and without application downtime. This preview is supported for VMSS stateless infrastructure workloads that do not need to preserve disks or network resources. It is not supported for scale sets with stateful workloads or used with Service Fabric or Azure Kubernetes Services. Benefits This feature enables you to increase the availability and resiliency of your scale set by taking advantage of higher zonal availability SLA (99.99%) vs regional availability SLA (99.95%) Update the selection of zones over which the scale set will spread instances without deleting and recreating the scale set Expand your scale set to ta
Update Type: Preview, Services: Service Fabric, Virtual Machines, VM Scale Sets, Kubernetes Service, Categories: Features, Services

Generally Available: Azure Monitor VM Insights using Azure Monitor Agent

Thu, 31 Aug 2023 00:00:00 Z

VM Insights using Azure Monitor Agent provides various benefits like cost savings, simplified management experience and enhanced security & performance.
Update Type: GA, Services: Virtual Machines, VM Scale Sets, Azure Monitor, Categories: Features, Services