We are excited to announce preview of enhancements in Azure DevTest Labs designed to accommodate two upcoming retirements in Azure:

These retirements will not impact VMs with Private IPs. However, they will impact VMs with Public or Shared IPs in the following ways:

Impact on VMs with Public IPs:

• Current Setup: When you create a Public IP VM, a Basic SKU Public IP address resource with dynamic IP allocation is created.
• New Setup: A Standard SKU Public IP address resource with static IP allocation will be created when you create a Public IP VM. Each VM with a Public IP will be assigned its own public IP address, allowing direct access via RDP or SSH. You need to create and configure a Network Security Group to allow inbound traffic such as RDP or SSH connection.
• How to View the SKU:
  1. Go to the Azure compute view of the VM under Network settings.
  2. Click on the link of the Public IP resource.
  3. In the resource overview page, you can see the SKU type as Standard.

Impact on VMs with Shared IPs:

• Current Setup: All VMs created with Shared IPs are placed in the same resource group, which has one assigned Basic SKU public IP address. DevTest Labs automatically creates a Basic load balancer to manage traffic for these VMs. When a VM with a shared IP is added to a subnet, it is automatically added to the load balancer and assigned a TCP port number on the public IP address, forwarding to the SSH port on the VM.
• New Setup: A Standard SKU load balancer will be created and used instead of a Basic Load Balancer. You need to create and configure a Network Security Group to allow inbound traffic such as RDP or SSH connection.
• How to View the SKU:
  1. Go to the Azure compute view of the VM under Load Balancing.
  2. Click on the link of the load balancer resource.
  3. In the resource overview page, you can see the SKU type as Standard.

Please check out the Azure DevTest Labs public documentation related to these changes.

These changes in Azure DevTest Labs are being rolled out to different regions in phases. We expect to complete the rollout by March 31, 2025.

To learn more about upgrading a basic public IP address to Standard SKU and upgrading from Basic Load Balancer to Standard Load Balancer, check out the following articles:

1. Upgrading a basic public IP address to Standard SKU
2. Upgrading from Basic Load balancer