Azure-Communitysupport

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).

VM Created from custom image should be able to select storage account for VHD

When we try to create a virtual machine from a custom image the VHD's for the new virtual machine are created in the same storage account as the custom image. This is not ideal because most customers have different environments in different subscriptions so they are forced to copy the image into storage account in each subscriptions. It is not easy to copy the images between the storage accounts either.

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.

Live migrate the VMs during maintenance/hardware failures

Right now Azure VM customers experience very frequent restarts that impact the availability of services. As far as I know, these restarts are mostly caused by either host upgrades or hardware failures. Developing a HA setup is pretty straightforward for some scenarios (web servers), complex (database back-ends, notably MySQL) or extremely difficult (back-end applications used by our accounting department, for instance, which were designed to be run on one machine). Of course, HA setups are necessary for any major applications, but most of the setups we see have lots of single-instance roles (and for good reason most of the times). Currently, if you don't have an HA setup, machines are restarted about once per month or even more frequent (some as often as weekly). If this restart occurs during business hours, then this means downtime. Furthermore, for services like MySQL or SQL Server, this also means that the entire buffer pool is emptied and the performance of the application is degraded until the buffer pool fills up again. What we would love to have is something like Google Cloud's Live Migration - the VM would be moved to another host in case of hardware failures or host upgrades without restarts or downtime.

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).

VM Created from custom image should be able to select storage account for VHD

When we try to create a virtual machine from a custom image the VHD's for the new virtual machine are created in the same storage account as the custom image. This is not ideal because most customers have different environments in different subscriptions so they are forced to copy the image into storage account in each subscriptions. It is not easy to copy the images between the storage accounts either.

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.

Live migrate the VMs during maintenance/hardware failures

Right now Azure VM customers experience very frequent restarts that impact the availability of services. As far as I know, these restarts are mostly caused by either host upgrades or hardware failures. Developing a HA setup is pretty straightforward for some scenarios (web servers), complex (database back-ends, notably MySQL) or extremely difficult (back-end applications used by our accounting department, for instance, which were designed to be run on one machine). Of course, HA setups are necessary for any major applications, but most of the setups we see have lots of single-instance roles (and for good reason most of the times). Currently, if you don't have an HA setup, machines are restarted about once per month or even more frequent (some as often as weekly). If this restart occurs during business hours, then this means downtime. Furthermore, for services like MySQL or SQL Server, this also means that the entire buffer pool is emptied and the performance of the application is degraded until the buffer pool fills up again. What we would love to have is something like Google Cloud's Live Migration - the VM would be moved to another host in case of hardware failures or host upgrades without restarts or downtime.

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).

VM Created from custom image should be able to select storage account for VHD

When we try to create a virtual machine from a custom image the VHD's for the new virtual machine are created in the same storage account as the custom image. This is not ideal because most customers have different environments in different subscriptions so they are forced to copy the image into storage account in each subscriptions. It is not easy to copy the images between the storage accounts either.

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.

Live migrate the VMs during maintenance/hardware failures

Right now Azure VM customers experience very frequent restarts that impact the availability of services. As far as I know, these restarts are mostly caused by either host upgrades or hardware failures. Developing a HA setup is pretty straightforward for some scenarios (web servers), complex (database back-ends, notably MySQL) or extremely difficult (back-end applications used by our accounting department, for instance, which were designed to be run on one machine). Of course, HA setups are necessary for any major applications, but most of the setups we see have lots of single-instance roles (and for good reason most of the times). Currently, if you don't have an HA setup, machines are restarted about once per month or even more frequent (some as often as weekly). If this restart occurs during business hours, then this means downtime. Furthermore, for services like MySQL or SQL Server, this also means that the entire buffer pool is emptied and the performance of the application is degraded until the buffer pool fills up again. What we would love to have is something like Google Cloud's Live Migration - the VM would be moved to another host in case of hardware failures or host upgrades without restarts or downtime.

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).

VM Created from custom image should be able to select storage account for VHD

When we try to create a virtual machine from a custom image the VHD's for the new virtual machine are created in the same storage account as the custom image. This is not ideal because most customers have different environments in different subscriptions so they are forced to copy the image into storage account in each subscriptions. It is not easy to copy the images between the storage accounts either.

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.

Live migrate the VMs during maintenance/hardware failures

Right now Azure VM customers experience very frequent restarts that impact the availability of services. As far as I know, these restarts are mostly caused by either host upgrades or hardware failures. Developing a HA setup is pretty straightforward for some scenarios (web servers), complex (database back-ends, notably MySQL) or extremely difficult (back-end applications used by our accounting department, for instance, which were designed to be run on one machine). Of course, HA setups are necessary for any major applications, but most of the setups we see have lots of single-instance roles (and for good reason most of the times). Currently, if you don't have an HA setup, machines are restarted about once per month or even more frequent (some as often as weekly). If this restart occurs during business hours, then this means downtime. Furthermore, for services like MySQL or SQL Server, this also means that the entire buffer pool is emptied and the performance of the application is degraded until the buffer pool fills up again. What we would love to have is something like Google Cloud's Live Migration - the VM would be moved to another host in case of hardware failures or host upgrades without restarts or downtime.