How to Plan for VM Retirement

• New VM series are both an opportunity to save money and a signal that existing series may become harder to come by.
• Before they are retired, VMs can be capacity constrained, which itself can be problematic.

As its datacenters age and newer hardware becomes available, Microsoft stops deploying new instances of some Azure VM series hardware and, eventually, completely removes older hardware from service. Previously such retirements have been limited to special-purpose VMs, but a wave of more widely used series is moving closer to retirement. Because retirements can be disruptive, customers should monitor the availability of VM types on which they rely and have plans for how to migrate them to newer series should they be nearing retirement.

One way to stay ahead of VM retirements is to watch for the introduction of new potential successors. Not only are new VM introductions the first sign that existing ones may become capacity constrained, but new instances also represent possible cost savings, depending on the workload.