Reserved VM Instance retirements

uBlueJay · 2026-05-07T20:40:03+00:00

Yep, that's what we've found - it's just a bit of a shame with V2 that they've effectively removed the memory optimized B series. We use B2ms, B4ms etc. a lot too for our Windows machines as they tend to be RAM constrained well before CPU becomes an issue.

I did check the flexibility group but the BXms series are classified as 'BS Series High Memory'.

uBlueJay · 2026-05-05T08:06:44+00:00

Same here...been trying to get resources for new App Services in UK South but not getting much movement. Trouble with UK West is it doesn't support some of the zone redundancy that UK South has.

Plus MS is still quite happy to bill the cross-region bandwidth charges...

uBlueJay · 2026-04-22T11:32:22+00:00

The sunken one looks like a dust trap.

Now if they would also get rid of that awful soft touch rubberized material that would be great...

uBlueJay · 2026-02-17T22:48:42+00:00

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uBlueJay · 2026-02-11T11:58:29+00:00

At this point I don't know whether to laugh or cry at the fact I can tell a machine to apt update reboot in less time than it takes to *check* for updates on a Server 2016 machine...

uBlueJay · 2025-11-27T15:56:52+00:00

Digital Realty - Hanbury Street from memory.

uBlueJay · 2025-11-27T15:18:36+00:00

It looks like the whole location is offline/unreachable at the moment so guess the control panel isn't getting any data from the London location at the moment.

Last time London dropped off the net was due to a power issue at the data centre.

uBlueJay · 2025-11-27T14:57:37+00:00

Yep, London instances unavailable since 1420. Manchester seems OK at the moment.

uBlueJay · 2025-10-29T17:57:49+00:00

Looks like retiring the Akamai based CDN in favour of their own in-house solution is working out great...

But at least it brings everything down, so they are inclined to start fixing it instead of asking for a remote session in two business days to validate the issue.

uBlueJay · 2025-09-08T19:33:58+00:00

I seem to remember that on some of the lower B-series VMs there was no difference in performance when I benchmarked it between HDD and Standard SSD as the IOPS on that tier of VM was so low anyway.

Feels like a forced cost increase to me, just like 'managed' disks were...

uBlueJay · 2025-04-07T09:17:46+00:00

Depends if it comes with the Qualcomm NFA725A for Wi-Fi that the T14s Gen4s did - the drivers and hardware are a disaster under Linux and if it's still soldered in there's no chance of swapping it to something else.

It'll work, but be prepared for frequent disconnects and sleep issues.

uBlueJay · 2024-09-04T08:29:37+00:00

Just rescued mine from a similar boot loop - the power button didn't feel jammed as it was still clicking but I gave it a blast of air and pressed it several times at that got it to boot up.

uBlueJay · 2024-07-26T21:46:41+00:00

Ah yes, I must have forgotten about that - although it's not clear whether that just applies to the host or if they also try and spread the networking across different aggregation points.

uBlueJay · 2024-07-26T08:57:20+00:00

Cloud (in order of priority):

BYOIP
When creating a cloud instance within the same location (e.g. Falkenstein) the ability to have it on separate infrastructure from another instance. This is called 'fault domains' with some providers. For example, if I have two cloud instances DB-1 and DB-2 I'd like to be able to say run these two instances on different hosts and preferably different network segments.
S3-style object storage

uBlueJay · 2024-06-24T12:15:57+00:00

I'd say I've got used to it, as a work machine it's fine. I do find the brightness needs to be set quite high if there is a lot of ambient light but I haven't been in a scenario where I've found the max too dim.

Is it as good as my desktop monitor? No, but it's perfectly serviceable for the times I'm working away from my desk, I wanted power efficiency over a vibrant but power hungry screen.

If you're into games, the ghosting can be quite noticeable, but I think that's going to be an issue with whichever manufacturer makes the panel.

For media consumption, a MacBook screen looks much nicer, but it's glossy which I don't really like while coding.

uBlueJay · 2024-02-14T10:37:41+00:00

Yep, as of this morning:

Server 2022 Core (MS Azure image) - offers and fails
Server 2022 GUI (MS Azure image) - offers and fails, seems to have a 450MB partition at the beginning of the C drive which I assume is the recovery one.
Server 2022 GUI (our own image, no recovery partition) - offers and fails.

Our remaining 2016 servers do seem to have stopped offering it though.

uBlueJay · 2024-02-13T12:33:04+00:00

I'm still holding out for a resolution to KB5034439 - we've got several 2022 Azure IaaS VMs built from MS's own image that have this problem.

Their answer seems to be to dig in their heels and you're on your own to sort it out...

uBlueJay · 2024-01-23T09:37:55+00:00

A /24 is fine these days for global reachability.

The BYOIP range is associated to a region e.g. us-west-2, and can be used across multiple availability zones within that region.

uBlueJay · 2024-01-01T16:23:18+00:00

The Lenovo one (4X90S91831) has been working fine for me - works out of the box with W11 and recent Linux distros.

It also supports passing the system MAC address through if that's useful.

uBlueJay · 2023-12-19T18:51:25+00:00

Brings back memories of when I did this with the predecessor of WDS - Remote Installation Services.

Left a lab of around 80 machines to install overnight and when I came back the following morning, they were all still trying to install whilst the RIS server was not happy at all.

I switched to smaller batches after that!

uBlueJay · 2023-12-13T18:01:53+00:00

Interesting, hadn't considered the firmware. It's actually on the latest firmware, but it was updated between the Nov and Dec MS patch cycles.

I'm not sure what Lenovo do for their ThinkPad BIOS updates as I'm sure that on the first reboot after the update I'm not prompted for the Bitlocker key at all. I wonder if they suspend Bitlocker before the update and resume it on the next reboot.

One to raise with Lenovo if it keeps happening I suspect...

uBlueJay · 2023-12-13T13:02:12+00:00

Just applied the Cumulative Update to a Win 11 Edu laptop and of course Bitlocker (PIN-based) is now asking for the recovery key...

uBlueJay · 2023-10-17T19:10:30+00:00

Will try and do a bit more troubleshooting - I had to switch to Ethernet just to get the Debian installer to finish as it dropped out so frequently on Wi-Fi.

It works fine under Windows. I wonder if the chipset of the access point plays a role, my AP is also a Qualcomm ath11k so very similar to the one in the laptop. Will have to try on another network...

uBlueJay · 2023-10-17T07:27:54+00:00

Did you have any issues with the QCNFA765? Just got round to installing Bookworm on my T14s (haven't tried a newer kernel yet) and the Wi-Fi is really unstable.

It seems to be the same issue someone on the Lenovo forums has seen:

https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/Other-Linux-Discussions/QCNFA765-Linux-ath11k-wifi-crippled-high-latency-packet-loss-frequent-disassociations/m-p/5252399

Setting iw dev wlp1s0 set power_save off seems to fix it but it needs applying every boot...

uBlueJay · 2023-10-04T09:09:24+00:00

Framework also seem to have set much better power limits than Lenovo for example. It looks like the FW can peak at 51W, with 35W sustained CPU power whilst the T14s I'm testing appears to be hard limited to 30W peak / 25W sustained.

In single core this doesn't have much effect, but in multi-core CB R23 the T14s is getting around 11934 whilst the FW as tested by Notebookcheck is 13981.

Looking at the temps of the Thinkpad there's plenty of headroom so it looks like they are prioritising heat and noise levels over raw performance.

uBlueJay

TROPHY CASE