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

We are looking into adding this support.
6 comments
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Greg Frick commented
Please add support for an in-place upgrade. It's very prohibitive to go through the recommended process.
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Jesus Araujo commented
Any update on this? Looking for upgrading 2016 to 2019
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Mark Bell commented
I would really appreciate this feature! There is simply a lot more risk in migrating the workload versus doing a straight upgrade. Please make this possible and supported!
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Ian Pickering commented
In addition, it should be supported to upgrade from a Standard OS version to Enterprise.
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Mark Lewis commented
This is especially important with the 1709 to 1803 update in particular, along with future twice yearly release cadence upgrades
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Peter Selch Dahl commented
See this post for steps needed to perform the upgrade: https://blog.peterdahl.net/2017/09/06/upgrading-azure-virtual-machine-from-windows-server-2012-r2-to-windows-server-2016