Microsoft Announcement of Retiring Azure VMs
Microsoft announced that several of its VM series will be expiring in the next few years and has provided recommendations to migrate to newer VMs.
Specifically, the D/Ds/Dv2/Dsv2 series are retiring in May 2028. 3-year reservations (RIs) are no longer available for purchase or renewal. Microsoft says that 1-year RIs are available until 2027.
The Lsv2/B/Av2/Amv2/F/Fs/Fsv2/G/Gs series are retiring in November 2028. 3-year RIs are no longer available for purchase or renewal. Microsoft says that 1-year RIs for these VMs are available until November 2027 (but it appears that Microsoft has removed public RI pricing for the retiring VMs on their pricing website).
While your existing RIs will continue to provide discounts through the remainder of the contract, you should start planning now because your Azure reservation options are already limited.
The table below provides a summary of the expiring VMs:
* Microsoft previously offered support for Azure SQL Database on Fsv2 hardware, which is being deprecated. Customers must migrate to other options within Azure SQL Database by October 2026.
What This Means for You
Migrating to newer VMs requires significant time as you evaluate specifications and weigh cost-efficiency tradeoffs. While Microsoft offers recommendations based on their migration guide, you may find other options that meet your workload and cost requirements. Some considerations include:
- Workload Fit: Which new VM series meets your application requirements?
- Regional Availability: Which regions does it support?
- Commitment Eligibility: Is it eligible for discounts from Azure Reservations and/or Savings Plans for Compute? If so, how much of a discount?
If you have existing commitments, you will also need a plan in place during the transition. How do you keep those commitments utilized as you migrate to new VMs? When commitments are unutilized, you waste budget, instead of reinvesting it into infrastructure and application performance improvements.
Real-World Example
Say you have some Standard_F2s_v2, which are from the Fsv2 series. Since Microsoft is deprecating this series, it no longer offers new 3-year RIs and will stop selling new 1-year RIs by 2027.
What should you do?
Microsoft recommends upgrading to the Dldsv5/Dlsv5/Dsv5/Ddsv5 series, but those VMs are either more expensive (Standard_D2ds_v5 is 34% higher PAYG) or fail specification requirements (Standard_D2s_v5 does not have temporary storage).
The D2pldsv6 series is not among the VMs recommended by Microsoft, but the Standard_D2plds_62 is an alternative option that has comparable pricing, specs, and 1-year/3-year discounts available. You select this as your new VM.
The side-by-side comparison table shows pricing, specs, and processor information for different VM options:
Selecting the appropriate VM series is only half the battle. You still have to decide the optimal modernization pathway.
Option 1 is to delay the upgrade. Switch to the 1-year RI for now until it is no longer available on May 1, 2027. Then, modernize with the new VM series and its 3-year RI.
Option 2 is to change the VM series to Standard_D2plds_v6 now and adjust to its 3-year RI.
By choosing to modernize now than later, your Effective Savings Rate (ESR) stays high at 62%, your Effective Avoidance Rate (EAR) increases to 6.8%, and you reduce costs by $211.96 per unit VM resource.
ESR is the ultimate KPI for measuring the ROI from rate optimization activities, while EAR is a measure of how much cost was avoided by turning off or using less resources. Positive ESR and EAR means that you reduced waste and increased savings by switching to the new VM and leveraging its commitment.
Here’s how the two options compare per unit VM resource when you fully utilize their commitments:
Key Takeaway: Modernize and rate optimize without delay. If you wait to switch to newer Azure VMs, you may sacrifice long-term cost efficiency.
Optimal Modernization with ProsperOps Automation
A successful modernization of your VMs requires optimizing resource types while leaning into commitment management. Balancing both requires continuous monitoring of your usage and making adjustments to commitments aligned with your rate optimization strategy. This is extremely complex and would not be possible without intelligent automation.
ProsperOps is an intelligent FinOps automation platform that offloads the complexities of Azure VM modernization and maximizes your cost efficiency. Our platform uses sophisticated algorithms to determine which new Azure VM series best fit your workloads beyond those recommended by Microsoft. ProsperOps also manages your new and existing commitments automatically during the transition period.
In the previous real-world example, a customer came to ProsperOps to help them find the most optimal modernization pathway given that some of their VMs (e.g., Standard_F2s_v2) were expiring. ProsperOps not only devised a VM upgrade strategy but also executed to deliver cost efficiencies that would have not been possible manually.
Our console tracks your ESR and other rate optimization KPIs as well so you can easily report on your progress and share the results with leadership.
Book a demo with ProsperOps today. Modernize your Azure VMs without sacrificing cost efficiency automatically.
