Truth be told, Azure is not a direct comparison of Hyper-V since Microsoft has modified how Azure works to better support a self-service public cloud. While the differences between Azure Generation 1 and Generation 2 VMs are not quite the same as on premises Hyper-V, just consider the Azure Generation 2 VMs \u201cNext Generation\u201d and you will be fine \ud83d\ude42 <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Azure has supported Generation 2 VMs for a while now, however, throughout the preview and even into the GA release there were limitations associated with them, such as lack of support for VM backup, encryption etc., which caused me to advise clients to hold off. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Here we\u2019ll take another look, and you will see all those limitations are now gone! Generation 2 VMs support all the standard feature sets you would expect for IaaS VMs in Azure, such as Azure Disk Encryption, Azure Site Recovery and Azure Backup. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Generation 2 now supports all of the same features as Generation 1 and they even support gigantic OS disks, which hardly anyone would even care about. So, why should you consider Generation 2 VMs in Azure? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Here are some of the improved features of Generation 2 VMs: <\/p>\n\n\n\n While some of these options may not apply to all your workloads currently, it would be beneficial to position yourself in a way where you can leverage them when the time comes. I can tell you from firsthand experience, once something becomes the new-er\/modern way of doing things in Azure, it\u2019s only a matter of time until it becomes the de facto way of doing things! Case in point, for all you Azure pioneers (pre-2015), remember the \u201cnew\u201d thing called Azure Resource Manager\u2026 need I say more? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Another thing to consider is unlike some tools which you can just plan to implement later, the generation of the VM cannot be changed after the VM is created. A good example of this would be moving from Availability Sets to Availability Zones, which can be managed with a quick re-provisioning of a VM. If you build the VM as a Generation 1, it will always be a Generation 1 – as of this writing anyway. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Want more reasons to consider provisioning Generation 2 VMs now? How about:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here are the OS images which are supported for Generation 2 VMs from the Azure Marketplace:<\/p>\n\n\n\n To summarize, there is no downside to going with Generation 2 VMs in Azure now. You will be futureproofing yourself since Generation 2 already supports several security and performance related features, with more to come. I would recommend using Generation 2 for all new deployments if possible and plan for the eventual replacement of Generation 1 VMs over time as the requirements change for your workloads. You do not want to be left behind! I recently wrote a series on business continuity and protection from cyber attacks in Azure which you may want to read next, click here to head to part 1<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If you have been creating Virtual Machines in Azure and avoiding using Generation 2 VMs, maybe\u00a0it\u2019s\u00a0time to have another look.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":91,"featured_media":7298,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[76,79,170,171,59,172,173,174],"class_list":["post-7295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cloud-and-modern-data-center","tag-azure","tag-cloud","tag-hyper-v","tag-iaas","tag-microsoft","tag-recovery-and-backup","tag-windows-8","tag-windows-server","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.insentragroup.com\/gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.insentragroup.com\/gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.insentragroup.com\/gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.insentragroup.com\/gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/91"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.insentragroup.com\/gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7295"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.insentragroup.com\/gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7295\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8932,"href":"https:\/\/www.insentragroup.com\/gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7295\/revisions\/8932"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.insentragroup.com\/gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.insentragroup.com\/gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.insentragroup.com\/gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.insentragroup.com\/gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.insentragroup.com\/gb\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2021\/12\/niel_hoffman_blog_12072021_img_1-1024x380.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n