Azure - Why??????

There are times when I think working with Microsoft Azure is great. Things generally just work, new features are added frequently, and there are plenty of options in terms of how to interact with it - the portal is usable and there are multiple ways to interact programmatically.

Sometimes though, things just take forever, for no reason. This is especially true when dealing with the IaaS part of the offering, as at times a Virtual Machine will spin up quickly, and at other times it'll take forever, or get stuck in some weird way. Fair enough, usually things just work ok, but when these odd issues crop up it sure is frustrating.

An example of that has happened today. Granted I'm using the DevTest Labs feature so maybe it is a bit raw, but I was able to spin up a new Windows VM within a few minutes a couple of days ago, yet today I've tried creating a new Linux VM (which is usually a lot quicker than a Windows one) and it has just got stuck at the Creating stage, with no real feedback to help work out what has gone wrong (if anything!).

I'll probably now just end up in some odd cycle of trying random things until I give up and delete the VM, then proceed to be able to create it quickly and with no fuss the second time round. The main thing that gets me with this is that I never know why it goes wonky like this, irrespective of how many logs or information blades I look through.