Earlier this month we announced that we had partnered with SUSE to offer telephone and email support for SLES 11 SP3. Up until this announcement, Microsoft provided support for the Azure virtualized infrastructure (Compute, Networking and Storage) for Linux on Azure-Endorsed Distributions. Incidents that were completely in the guest operating system were not supported by Microsoft when using a Linux guest operating system. Now, with SLES Premium images in the Azure Image Gallery, you can get support from Microsoft for Azure and support from SUSE for the SLES 11 SP3 guest operating system.

In order to qualify for SLES guest operating system support through Azure, you must be running a VM that was provisioned from a Premium Image in the Azure Image Gallery that includes telephone and email support, and you must have a Microsoft Azure support plan. To provision a VM using the Premium Image you must select the Premium Image from the Azure Image Gallery in the portal (shown below) or select the Premium Image when deploying from PowerShell or the cross-platform command line interface.

To receive support for a VM deployed from a Premium Image, you must first initiate a support request through Azure support. This is typically initiated via the Azure portal under the Contact Microsoft Support option.

Your support experience will start with the professionals in the Azure support team, and if the issue requires support from SUSE support professionals, then they will be brought into the discussion.

For more information on Linux support on Microsoft Azure, please see the following article: KB 2941892.