Virtual Machines
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Virtual machine console access
There is no VMConnect capability for console access to the VM as there is with Hyper-V.
So in the situation where I lost connectivity, by misconfiguration, or system failure, is there only one very time and bandwith consuming way to fix it - download the VHDs on-premise, boot it in Hyper-V and VMConnect to repair VM, then upload all GBs back to the Azure...
I requesting console access, also with ability to mount some image for repair and boot from it (as we do it in standard environment).
2,060 votesThanks for the valid suggestion. Your feedback is now open for the user community to upvote which allows us to effectively prioritize your request against our existing feature list and also gives us insight into the potential impact of implementing the suggested feature
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rename vm
Add the ability to rename a VM. The VM name is what appears in Azure, not the DNS name.
Changing a VM's name should not affect the VM in any way. If you need a unique identifier for a VM that does not change, I suggest using a GUID rather than the VM's name in Azure.
841 votesApologies closed in error. Reopening
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Mac OS X Virtual Machines
Several, non-Microsoft/non-Azure, cloud-hosting services offer either dedicated, or virtualized machines running Mac OS X (with the OS running on Apple hardware, due to Mac OS X licensing). Examples include http://macstadium.com/, http://xcloud.me/, and http://www.macincloud.com/, among others.
Being able to provision a Mac OS X machine on Azure, using Azure pricing, and potentially, Azure Virtual Networking, would be useful for developers wishing to set up build machines for iOS apps, and potentially other use-cases.
348 votesunplanned ·
AdminAzure IaaS Engineering Team
(Azure IaaS Engineering Team, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure)
responded
This is not something that we have on our roadmap. It is something that we may consider in the future.
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Upload VHDX
A support for uploading VHDX images would be great. With that it wouldn't be necessary anymore to migrate a VHDX to VHD before.
342 votesunder review ·AdminAzure IaaS Engineering Team
(Azure IaaS Engineering Team, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure)
responded
The status of this item has been moved back to Under Review. We initially planned to move to VHDX support as part of our support for HyperV Gen2 VMs, but we ended up using the VHD format for Gen2 VMs as well. Some aspects of the Azure Infrastructure do not cleanly support VHDX OS or data disks. So this feature is dependent on some of these internal services being updated which is an ongoing process.
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Delete VM with all associated resources
Deleting a VM is a lot of click work. I have to manually delete the associated Network interface, Network security group, Public IP address. And then, from the associated storage account, I have to drill down into the VHD container in the right Blob to delete the associated .vhd and .status files.
Also, I have to do it in the right order, because there are dependencies between the various objects. If not, it fails, and I get a big fat pink error.
Also, the overview list does not refresh after the 'success' notification is posted, so I sit there guessing…
297 votesplanned ·AdminAzure IaaS Engineering Team
(Azure IaaS Engineering Team, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure)
responded
This is still coming. The work is being completed now and we will be able to expose it in a few months.
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Production / Staging VM
Provide a way to group VMs into production / staging environment. Somehow like the production / staging environments of cloud services.
289 votesunder review ·AdminAzure IaaS Engineering Team
(Azure IaaS Engineering Team, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure)
responded
This is something that we are looking at as part of bringing Cloud Services into the future. We’ll have more details in the coming months in this space and at that time we will provide more details on this feature.
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WSUS as a Service in Windows Azure
Microsoft needs to develop a WSUS as a service in Microsoft Azure with support for update domain in Azure. Perhaps it should be linked together with the System Center Advisor.
260 votesplanned ·AdminAzure IaaS Engineering Team
(Azure IaaS Engineering Team, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure)
responded
We are planning several improvements in this space that will enable better control over updates which are applied to VMs.
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A "sleep" state of VM which is cost wise similar to stop state. The VM wakes up and continues the previous session without rebooting OS.
It is a great feature of Azure to stop costs if the VM is stopped. But shutdown the VM needs close all the running programs and applications in the current session. It will be great if the VM can have a sleep mode which can stop all the costs (or partially). So users can quickly resume the work in the new session without restarting the VM.
231 votesunder review ·AdminAzure IaaS Engineering Team
(Azure IaaS Engineering Team, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure)
responded
This is something that we are evaluating now for a future Azure update.
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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.
213 votesplanned ·AdminAzure IaaS Engineering Team
(Azure IaaS Engineering Team, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure)
responded
Currently you can increase the size of a disk when the VM is in the stop-deallocated state. We are also working on a solution where a disk can be increased in size while attached to a running VM.
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Allow easy donation of unused CPU cycles to cancer research, Folding@home, etc.
I would like to easily 'donate' my unused CPU cycles towards a good cause, such as cancer research within the Folding@home project.
Ideally this setting would be incorporated into the config of my worker roles, or within the Windows Azure portal.
168 votesunder review ·AdminAzure IaaS Engineering Team
(Azure IaaS Engineering Team, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure)
responded
This idea is still in our blacklog. We are working to see if the functionality can be enabled with something similar to our low-priority VMs which are currently in preview.
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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.
146 votesunder review ·AdminAzure IaaS Engineering Team
(Azure IaaS Engineering Team, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure)
responded
This is something that we are reviewing to determine when we can support the functionality.
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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!
137 votesstarted ·AdminAzure IaaS Engineering Team
(Azure IaaS Engineering Team, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure)
responded
Startup times for VMs continues to be a focus in Azure. I am leaving this item in the “Started” state because we still have work to be done, but the current deployment time we are seeing for Windows Server on average is 2 minutes (1 minute for Linux). We’ll continue to invest resources in driving down this number.
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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
120 votesunder review ·AdminAzure IaaS Engineering Team
(Azure IaaS Engineering Team, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure)
responded
We are looking into adding this support.
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search by ip
It would be nice to search/filter virtual machines in the azure portal by IP number
109 votesThat is good feedback. As we expand out our networking capabilities, we will look at this.
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Adding existing ARM virtual machine to availability set
Adding existing ARM virtual machine to availability set. I can't do much with certain setups cause they have to be in an availability set and I cant add them to one after they have been created.
105 votesValid suggestion open for upvote
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Shrink Managed disk
I'd like the ability to shrink a managed disk.
I'm creating a managed image from a marketplace windows server base, installing a bunch of third party software and using DevTest labs and VSTS to automate the build of a base image that I use for a large number of VM deployments.
The managed disks created from my image are 128gb of which I use about 40gb. I'd like to shrink the managed disk used in the image to 64gb so the VMs I deploy from my image fit in the S6 managed disk pricing bracket.
103 votesunder review ·AdminAzure IaaS Engineering Team
(Azure IaaS Engineering Team, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure)
responded
This feature is under review for implementation.
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Support Direct Access in Azure
Today it is not supported to use the Remote Access Role in a Windows Server in Azure. It would be a great Feature, if Clients Can connect via Direct Access to Azure Ressources
95 votesunplanned ·AdminAzure IaaS Engineering Team
(Azure IaaS Engineering Team, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure)
responded
Adding this as a supported scenario for Azure VMs is not currently planned.
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Make the timeout period for the DSC VM extension configurable
Currently I am deploying a lab environment using ARM and DSC. The deployment includes an unattended installation of SQL server, which takes a lot of time. This means that most of the time the DSC VM extension times out after 90 minutes and gives an error while the DSC configuration will complete successfully a few minutes later. It would help if I could set the timeout for the extension myself.
72 votes -
Linux Gentoo image (VHD) by Microsoft
Add Gentoo Linux support.
65 votesunplanned ·AdminAzure IaaS Engineering Team
(Azure IaaS Engineering Team, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure)
responded
We have no current plans to create a Gentoo image, as we have seen a lower demand for this compared to other distros, and a workaround is possible by creating a custom VM image. Note that Gentoo is highly customizable, which makes it less suited to being offered as a platform image running Azure agent, as assumptions would need to be made about the desired configuration. We will revisit this decision if customer demand for this distro increases.
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add the ability to create a VM and install an OS (Linux/Windows) from an .ISO
It would be great to be able to stand up a VM w/ my hardware requirements and mount an .iso of the OS that I want to install. This is how Hyper V and vCenter works. We would upload the OS .ISO to a datastore, give the new VM access to the indicated datastore, and use the .ISO that is on the datastore as a bootable OS.
This way we could install custom linux OS's or other versions of windows (e.g. server 2008 R2 Standard x64)
61 votesunder review ·AdminAzure IaaS Engineering Team
(Azure IaaS Engineering Team, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure)
responded
For Windows this idea is dependent on console access to provide interactive access to the booting VM. Console access itself is under review currently and pending work to support console access in a highly secure manner.
In the interim it is possible to create a custom VM or image through nested virtualization. Once the VM has been created through nested virtualization.
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