Configure Azure VMs for high availability

The platform identifies Azure Virtual Machines (VMs) that are not configured for high availability and recommends implementing availability zones, availability sets, or virtual machine scale sets. Failure to configure high availability leaves critical workloads vulnerable to downtime from hardware failures, maintenance events, or other disruptions, potentially impacting business continuity.

Recommendation Impact Across KPIs

KPI	Impact	Calculated?
Reliability:	Reduces potential downtime through redundancy and fault tolerance	✅
Security Compliance:	No direct security impact	❌
Economic:	No direct economic impact calculated	❌
User Experience:	No direct user experience impact calculated	❌
Environment:	No direct environmental impact calculated	❌

Score Calculation

1. Data Ingestion

VM Instance Names
Current Availability Configuration
Zone/Region Distribution
Scale Set Membership

2. Data Enrichment

Mapping to Availability Requirements
Suitable HA Configuration Options
Potential Downtime Risk Assessment

3. Health Score

Calculate the Reliability score based on potential downtime minutes
Score multiplier increases based on time since recommendation was loaded (0.01 per day)
Data sourced from DataTable-VM

Example Graph

Pie chart showing the distribution of VMs across different configuration options, highlighting the percentage of VMs in various availability states as tracked in DataTable-VM.

Business Opportunities

Product Sales Opportunity

As a provider this recommendation provides you an opportunity to generate revenue through system upgrade configurations. Each VM requiring high availability configuration represents a billable opportunity based on the system count.

Professional Services Opportunity

The recommendation provides opportunities for professional services to implement high availability configurations, including architectural planning, implementation, and testing. Additional revenue can be generated through Azure license sales and ongoing management tools.

Remediation Guidance

To resolve the recommendation the following steps are recommended:

Develop a High Availability Plan
Identify Critical VMs
Assess Requirements
Choose HA Strategy

Allocate Resources

Communicate with Stakeholders

Notify IT Teams
Clarify Impact

Schedule Implementation

Execute High Availability Configuration

Configure Availability Sets
Configure Availability Zones
Set Up Scale Sets

Implement Load Balancing

Post-Configuration Monitoring & Optimization

Verify VM Availability
Monitor High Availability

Test Failover

Ongoing Maintenance

Review VM Health
Update HA Configuration
Stay Updated with Best Practices

Supporting Information

Supported Data Sources

Azure Advisor
CoreStack

Recommendation Categorisation

Reconfigure
Infrastructure
High Availability

Supported Instances

Azure Virtual Machines
Server Workloads

Planned Instances

Status: In Development
Implementation Type: New Configuration
Asset Type: Server