What is Azure Virtual Machine Scale Set?

1. Pre-requisite Knowledge –

Before we start with the understanding of what is Microsoft Azure Virtual Machine Scale Set, we should know –

1. Basic knowledge of cloud computing and its services
2. Basic knowledge of Microsoft Azure
3. Basic knowledge of Virtual Machine

2. Introduction of Microsoft Azure Virtual Machine Scale Set –
   • When we create the virtual machines in the Microsoft Azure cloud then it is important to think about the availability of the virtual machines along with the elasticity of the application.
   • Elasticity is one of core feature in cloud computing which means application resources can scale up and down based on the user traffic and load on the resources.
   • Scale sets are built on top of virtual machines.
   • The elasticity of application can also be used to increase the performance of the application and its processing.
   • This is also helpful during maintenance activity to make application accessible even in the maintenance window by distributing an application across multiple instances.
   • To make a virtual machine with high availability then there are two factors are important to be considered – 1. Scale Set 2. Availability Set
   • Refer my another article to know what is availability set.
   • In this article, we will focus on the virtual machine scale set.
   • By using a Virtual machine scale set, we can increase or decrease the number of virtual machines based on the rules automatically.
   • Azure virtual machine scale set provides the capability to run the application on multiple virtual machines.
   • We can create and replicate the thousands of virtual machines in minutes.
   • Using a scale set, we can replicate the virtual machines instantly with the same hardware and software configurations as the base machine. It also configures the load balancer and networking for us.
   • Using a scale set, we can replicate the VM’s across the same or multiple data centers to get the benefit for availability zones.
   • Scale sets support up to 1,000 VM instances. If you create and upload your own custom VM images, the limit is 600 VM instances.
   • There is no additional cost for the scale set feature. We need to pay only virtual machine instances, load balancer, and redundancy.
   • Scale set supports both the operating systems Linux or Windows images.

3. Scale Set SLA

4. Reference Links –

• https://azure.microsoft.com/en-in/services/virtual-machine-scale-sets/
• https://www.itprotoday.com/iaaspaas/understanding-azure-virtual-machine-scale-sets-part-1
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machine-scale-sets/overview
• https://azure.microsoft.com/en-in/services/virtual-machines/
• https://status.azure.com/en-us/status

Conclusion - In this article, we have learned the overview of the Microsoft Azure Virtual Machine Set.