Virtual Machines
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Add gallery image for Server 2012 R2 Standard
Please add a gallery image for Server 2012 R2 Standard.
Please allow this option so we can align with our corporate standard VM version, it would not be a big deal if we could bring our own standard image and deploy it across storage accounts, but that is not possible either... so we either have to use a gallery image and customize it, or else we have to bring our own standard image and keep it across many, many storage accounts and subscriptions.
Using Datacenter version locks us into Azure, there is a big licensing cost to bring a VM…
186 votesThis is really good feedback. Thanks for raising the licensing issues when moving these images around. We do want to make mobility easy. Let me dig into it…
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Allow resize of attached VHD-disks
Right now you cannot resize your VHD-disks once attached to a VM directly from the portal. Edit should be possible to at least increase the size of VHD-disks on demand.
186 votesGiven the sparse nature of Windows Azure Storage and with recent announcement for trim support on guest OS’s that support trim, the need for resizing should be reduced, as you should just assume you start with the largest size possible and only pay for what you use.
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Ability to Hibernate VMs to support DevTest workflos
The new DevTest Azure portal feature has the ability to turn off VMs on a schedule to support dev/testing without breaking the budget. It would be nice if the VMs could be hibernated instead so that developers would not lose their development sessions/window settings etc. when they start off in the morning. But I understand that the ability to hibernate VMs in Azure is not currently a core feature that exists. It would be very nice if that feature could be added. I'm sure there are other use cases where VM hibernation could be very handy too.
127 votes -
Accelerate VM startup time
Startup time of a Windows VM in AWS is 1-1.5 minutes. In Azure this takes at least 5 minutes. VM Startup time is a big deal!
116 votesThanks, Daniel, for the feedback. We are constantly working to improve VM start-up time.
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Allow provisioned VM pricing to be altered to add software licensing without reprovisioning
As an Azure VM user/administrator, I would like to be able to take an existing VM priced at one rate, and "upgrade" the pricing to include licensing for products installed after provisioning. I would like this to provide flexibility (e.g., if I want to install SQL Server on a Windows priced VM, without losing install/configuration work already undertaken on that VM and without independently licensing SQL; or if I want to add BizTalk to a Win/SQL-priced VM). I would also like this to allow simplified compliance (e.g., a Windows-priced VM is found to have SQL Server installed after provisioning), to…
89 votes -
Support upgrading existing Azure VM with Windows Server 2012 R2 to Windows Server 2016
How do I go about upgrading existing Azure VM with Windows Server 2012 R2 to Windows Server 2016? It seems like a big issue for many companies for adopting Windows Server 2016 in Microsoft Azure.
"Microsoft server software support for Microsoft Azure virtual machines" article still states "Microsoft does not support an upgrade of the operating system of a Microsoft Azure virtual machine. Instead, you should create a new Azure virtual machine that is running the supported version of the operating system that is required and then migrate the workload."
Please support this scenario. Thanks
88 votes -
Allow rename of network interface resources
When creating a VM in the Azure Portal using the ARM deployment model, the network interface is labeled with the hostname + a 5 digit random? number.
I haven’t found a way to change this in the Portal.
In case a customer would prefer to use their own naming convention for interface resources, like <hostname>-ifc, can we consider adding this option to the Azure Portal?
I realize there is likely a way to do this already with ARM templates and PowerShell based deployments, but having this feature also available in the GUI would provide some added flexibility for new customers…
85 votes -
USB devices are not supported in Azure VMs
USB devices, like flash drives or hardware security dongles, would be useful to have present in the remote VMs. For example, support for dongle-controlled security for applications would then be possible.
39 votes -
Public IP Mapping on Nested VM!
We are working on Azure Public and checking nested VM for this we have created one instance "Standard E4s v3 (4 vcpus, 32 GB memory)". Hyper-V role has been installed successfully and also we have created 3 VMs successfully, now when we are setting networking for these created VM per MS KB "https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/virtualization/hyper-v-on-windows/user-guide/nested-virtualization" everything is working fine but our objective is still not getting solved with this.
We wanted to MAP a public IP on these VMs but per KB NAT is only solving purpose if we need to run internet only on created VMs or forwarding working…
24 votes -
Clone complete Resource Group
For DEV/TEST/PROD environments, it would be great to have a the possibility to clone all resources within a resource group to a new one. (Public IP's and other unique resources will be an issue), but as far as the VM's are cloned, it would save A LOT of time!
18 votes -
Make it possible to download a compressed (zip?) vhd instead of the full vhd
Make it possible to download a compressed (zip?) vhd instead of the full vhd. Now I have to download the whole vhd and not just the bits that are actually used.
18 votesWe are thinking of enabling an easy way to download a dynamic VHD to reduce the download size, if that helps? Unfortunately, I don’t think VHD files compress that well.
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Offer SMB 3.0 support for Windows 7 machines.
We need an update to enable SMB 3.0 support for Windows 7 machines. Older projects using NET USE scripts to attach to Azure storage can no longer access their containers.
Windows 7 machines that use to access the file shares in a storage account can no longer connect to file shares using the NET USE command. As a long time user of Azure it feels like Microsoft has left us behind. Upgrading all our users to win 10 is not an easy task..16 votes -
auto-startup
Currently there is the possibility to schedule auto-shutdown of VMs directly with the Auto-Shutdown blade. Why isn't there a similar blade for auto-startup? In addition of that for Auto-Shutdown and Auto-Startup if the schedule time can be scheduled not only as a single daily task but with more complex rule, example: from monday to friday, 9.00 18.00, weekend excluded or setting a scheduled date and time of shutdown, etc....
15 votes -
HTML5 RDP Access
We are in 2017. I want access to my VM in the browser. Downloading an RDP file is so 2007.
Dear Corey, do some magic and support HTML5 RDP access to my VM. One click and a new tab opens to my VM. Wow!
14 votes -
Allow a VM to be added to an availability set without recreating the VM
Currently after you have created a VM you are not able to add this to an existing or new availability set. It would be great if this was available function to be completed at any point during a VM's lifecycle.
14 votes -
Real Checkpoints - not VM Images
Checkpoints, as they are in Hyper-V and NOT VM Images as announced at Teched and already in production.
VM Images are not really the solution:
1. Amazon stores only the bits that have changed since the last snapshot, not again the whole machine.
If a have a server with TBs of data and checkpoint the virtual machine, why should I have to pay for the storage twice?
2. For a quick restore of the checkpoint, we would have to deploy the VM Image - no real solution in relation to how normal Hyper-V checkpoints work.14 votesWe will look at this as a direct Azure compute option. In the meantime, this may help: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/azure/hh488361.aspx
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Support MSDN images (SharePoint, SQL Server, BizTalk, Dynamics) in Azure Resource Manager templates
Support MSDN images (SharePoint, SQL Server, BizTalk, Dynamics) in Azure Resource Manager templates for dev/test scenarios.
For example the following 3 VM SharePoint template: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/virtual-machines-sharepoint-farm-azure-preview/ should be able to deploy using SQL and SharePoint images from MSDN, thus not attracting production licensing for dev scenarios.
13 votes -
Regional Settings for Windows VM
This request is submitted on behalf of one of my important customers.
When deploying Windows VM from Azure gallery image, we do not have the option to configure regional settings such as language/date format. By default, they are EN-US.
This will incur additional management overhead for customers that have a large deployment who has regional settings requirement. They have to log in the VM to change the settings accordingly.
The VM deployment interface (Azure portal and/or Azure PowerShell) should allow selection of different regional settings, just like the standard Windows setup does.
Please kindly let us know whether we have…
12 votes -
Add the ability to sort/filter on Virtual machine STATUS in the portal
I want to be able to quickly determine which of my ~400 virtual machines are currently Running
12 votes -
Console access to Azure Virtual machines
Ability to access Azure Virtual machines via a management console, very helpful for quick access when troubleshooting and RDP is not working.
11 votes
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