Azure DevTest Labs: Managed Disks supported in all labs

Azure DevTest Labs now supports Managed Disks in all labs, including VM OS disks, data disks, and custom images, in addition to new labs created since our last announcement.

In labs created earlier, when Managed Disks was not available:

• New VMs, data disks, or custom images will be created using Managed Disks. You still get the same user experience when creating those resources.
• Existing VMs will stay as is.
• Existing custom images will stay as is. In this case, when a VM is being created, DevTest Labs will create a VM backed by Managed Disks from the custom image VHD file.
• Existing data disks will stay as is until they're attached to a new VM that is backed by Managed Disks. After it's attached, a data disk will be upgraded to a managed disk and can't be attached to any existing VMs that are not backed by Managed Disks.
• Because VM OS disks are no longer created in a lab's storage account, labs will stop autoscaling the storage accounts and will stop copying new custom images to any storage accounts.

Managed Disks helps you manage multiple storage accounts for a large number of VMs. As its name indicates, all managed-disk resources are automatically managed by Azure instead of your own storage accounts, which simplifies scalable VM deployments and management. New labs no longer autoscale storage accounts for large-scale VM deployments. In addition, Managed Disks provides a better pricing model for disk storage. Check out more information on the Azure Managed Disks product page.