Updated: July 15, 2020 (August 18, 2014)

Windows Server Roles in Azure Virtual Machines

Wes Miller analyzes and writes about Microsoft’s security, identity management, and systems management technologies. Before joining Directions on Microsoft, Wes... more

Most Windows Server roles are supported for use in Azure Virtual Machines. In particular, the DHCP Server and Windows Deployment Services roles are redundant to, and would not interoperate well with, existing functionality offered within Azure Virtual Machines.

Azure Virtual Machines itself is based on a hypervisor hosted in Azure, so it does not support layering an additional hypervisor such as Hyper-V. DirectAccess is intended to provide connectivity to on-premises servers without requiring a virtual private network, but it is not necessary since Azure Virtual Machines instances are Internet-facing.

Microsoft offers Rights Management Services (RMS) through a Software as a Service model hosted with Office 365 and likely prefers that customers use that service instead of hosting RMS in Azure Virtual Machines.

While the use of the Windows Server Remote Desktop Services (RDS) role in Azure Virtual Machines is supported, as of July 1, 2013, doing so requires proper client licensing; in

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