Tech Tips, Tricks & Trivia

Note - Microsoft constantly updates its Azure services. Therefore information provided here & in the links may change Some limitations of Azure Services (IaaS & PaaS) - * While the top public cloud providers are considered enablers of hyperscale computing providing almost limitless resources on demand, there are limits that need to be reviewed to ensure they don't cause impediments for unique or unconventional use cases. While this constraint may not be an issue for most and there may be workarounds to address them, the  Subscription & service limits  have to be verified. * While a majority of Azure Services & their features are available across all regions, not all may be available in specific regions and in desired pricing tiers. This has to be verified prior to usage. * Some Azure Services & their features may be modified, removed or retired. Though Microsoft provides notice prior to the changes, the impact of the change has to be borne by the us...

Before you prepare your environment for Azure Backup, be sure to understand these limitations : * Backing up virtual machines with more than 16 data disks is not supported. * Backing up virtual machines with a reserved IP address and no defined endpoint is not supported. * Backing up Linux VMs encrypted through Linux Unified Key Setup (LUKS) encryption is not supported. * Microsoft doesn't recommend backing up VMs that contain Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV) or Scale-Out File Server configuration. They require involving all VMs included in the cluster configuration during a snapshot task. Azure Backup doesn't support multi-VM consistency. * Backup data doesn't include network mounted drives attached to a VM. * Replacing an existing virtual machine during restore is not supported. If you attempt to restore the VM when the VM exists, the restore operation fails. * Cross-region back up and restore are not supported. * Backing up and restoring virtual machines usin...

Besides disaster recovery of on-premises and Azure VMs,Site Recovery can help with the following types of migration : Migrate from on-premises to Azure : Migrate on-premises Hyper-V VMs, VMware VMs, and physical servers to Azure. After the migration, workloads running on the on-premises machines will be running on Azure VMs. Migrate within Azure : Migrate Azure VMs between Azure regions. Migrate AWS : Migrate AWS Windows instances to Azure IaaS VMs. It has some limitations though - ASR does not support the recovery of machines with desktop OS’es .  ( Also, some client virtual desktop flavours (eg. Windows 7) are not yet supported for licensing in Azure .) Failback to on-premises from Azure VM with managed disks is not currently supported. Replicating and recovering Azure virtual machines from one region to another region with ASR using PowerShell, CLI & REST API is not currently supported You can only replicate a classic virtual machine and recover it as a cla...

Managed Disks provide persistent, secured disk storage for Azure virtual machines. What's NOT possible with Azure Managed Disks: *  You can only increase the size of managed disks.  You cannot decrease/shrink disk size if it's accidentally over-provisioned. You can create a new disk with correct size and then copy the data from old disk. After that delete the old disk. *  The maximum number of disks you can attach to your VM cannot exceed the pre-defined limit for each type of VM *  SQL Server VMs running with datafiles directly on blob cannot leverage or utilize the features of Managed Disks *  Managed disks can be created only for virtual machines deployed using the Resource manager deployment model (not ASM) * It is not possible to add both managed and unmanaged disks to a VM that is in an availability set * ASR Azure to Azure protection is not supported for VMs with Managed Disks. It is going to be supported by the end of Q1 CY2018. * Stor...

Before setting out to migrate workloads, it helps to know what is NOT supported on Azure Virtual Machines - Note - Microsoft constantly updates its Azure services and information provided here may change 1. Microsoft does not support an upgrade of the operating system of a Microsoft Azure virtual machine. 2. Microsoft only supports server software that runs in the Microsoft Azure virtual machine environments subject to the Microsoft Support Lifecycle policy . 3. Microsoft does not support versions of the Microsoft server software that's running in the Azure virtual machine environment other than the  following : * Microsoft BizTalk Server 2013 and later - some features are not supported on Azure VMs * Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3 and later * Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 and later - requires Azure Premium storage services * Microsoft Dynamics GP 2013 and later * Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2013 * Exchange Server 2013 and l...