In May 2014 we announced the general availability of Regional Virtual Network. This enabled users to utilize their virtual network at regional scale and enjoy new features such as ‘Reserved IPs’, ‘Internal Load Balancing’ and ‘Instance level Public IPs’. Along with the announcement we indicated that migrating existing resources associated with an Affinity group to regional scope would be available in the future. We now provide additional information on the timing of migration availability and other related details.
What is Migration and what is the impact?
Migration is the process of moving networking related data/state from one internal system (cluster based) to another system (region based). This is purely a backend activity that has no customer impact and does not cause any downtime to running services. When a Virtual Network (VNet) is migrated, the metadata related to this VNet and the metadata of all the services running inside this VNet are copied to the regional system. This is the only change. Services are untouched and continue to run without any interruption.
Who really needs migration?
Migration is required only for customers that have existing services created in the Affinity group based system and are unable to tear down and re-create the services in the regional scope while needing one or more of the following abilities for their existing service:
- New D Series VMs and A8/A9 sized VMs in the same Virtual Network as small and medium sized VMs
- Reserved IPs, Internal load balancing, Instance level Public IP Address, Network Security groups or Multiple NICs for services running in an Affinity group based VNet
What are the timelines and next steps?
Azure will migrate all subscriptions automatically, but if there is an immediate need to migrate now, users can submit a support ticket to Azure starting December 12th, 2014 as shown below:
From the management portal, click on ‘Contact Microsoft Support’
On the ‘Create support ticket’ form, users should choose the support type as ‘Technical’ and create a ticket. In the ensuing window, the product should be ‘Virtual Networks (VNET)’ and the problem type should be ‘Migrate Virtual Network to Regional Virtual Network’. The issue will be tracked through a ticket number and will be promptly replied upon successful completion. Microsoft support team will enable your subscription for migration and will resolve the ticket.
FAQ
1. What do I do after my support ticket has been resolved?
When the support ticket is resolved you will also get additional instructions to execute to complete the migration to Regional Virtual Network. It will involve a simple step like editing your Virtual Network configuration with the location (region) information.
2. Will my VMs incur downtime during the migration?
No, as explained above there will be no downtime due to migration.
3. Will I lose my VIP due to migration?
No, there will be no state or data loss due to migration.