Upgrading from A-series to D-series Azure virtual machine

Question

We have SQL Sever setup on A-series virtual machines. We are wanting to upgrade to the D-series virtual machine. Is it as simple as just upgrading the VM in Azure and clicking save or are there any other things I need to watch out for? I have heard of people having issues upgrading due to the level not being available in the cluster that their Virtual Machines sit in.

Answer 1

The hardware infrastructure used for A series VM is not suitable for D series VM. It might be possible that the cluster where the VM is hosted, has the hardware configuration required for creating A series VM alone.

However if you would still want to change from A series to D series VM, you will have to export disks and create a new VM using the previously saved disks.

Going forward as a workaround: when you create your very first VM in your Cloud Service, be sure to specify one of the D-SERIES size even if you do not need it immediately. Doing this, your Cloud Service will be “tied” to a cluster that will support both A-SERIES (except A8/A9) and D-SERIES, then for all the future VMs contained in the same Cloud Service. Now, you can create additional A-SERIES VMs and mix together in the same Cloud Service. If you do not need the first D-SERIES VM, you can now safely delete it.