A virtual machine scale set is a group of identical virtual machines that are centrally managed, configured, and updated1. A virtual machine scale set can automatically increase or decrease the number of virtual machine instances in response to demand or a defined schedule2. A virtual machine scale set also provides high availability and fault tolerance by distributing the virtual machine instances across multiple fault domains and update domains3.
A fault domain is a logical group of underlying hardware that share a common power source and network switch. A fault domain can fail due to hardware or software failures, power outages, or network interruptions4. A virtual machine scale set can have up to five fault domains in a region.
An update domain is a logical group of underlying hardware that can undergo maintenance or be rebooted at the same time. An update domain can be affected by planned events, such as OS updates, application updates, or configuration changes4. A virtual machine scale set can have up to 20 update domains in a region.
By creating a virtual machine scale set that has 10 virtual machine instances, you can ensure that App1 always runs on at least eight virtual machines during planned Azure maintenance. This is because the default configuration of a virtual machine scale set is to have five fault domains and five update domains. This means that at any given time, only one fault domain or one update domain can be unavailable due to maintenance or failure. Therefore, at least eight out of 10 virtual machine instances will be available to run App1.
An availability set is another option for providing high availability and fault tolerance for your virtual machines. An availability set is a logical grouping of two or more virtual machines that are deployed across multiple fault domains and update domains. However, an availability set does not provide automatic scaling of resources or load balancing of traffic. You need to manually create and manage the number of virtual machine instances in an availability set.
Therefore, a virtual machine scale set is a better option than an availability set for your scenario. To create a virtual machine scale set, you can follow these steps:
Sign in to the Azure portal.
Select Create a resource > Compute > Virtual machine scale set.
On the Basics tab, enter a name for your scale set, select your subscription and resource group, select Windows Server 2019 as the image type, and enter a username and password for the administrator account.
On the Instance details tab, select the region where you want to deploy your scale set, select the size of the virtual machine instances, and enter 10 as the initial instance count.
On the Scaling tab, configure the scaling policy for your scale set based on metrics or schedule.
On the Load balancing tab, configure the load balancer for your scale set to distribute traffic across the instances.
On the Management tab, configure the diagnostics settings, automatic OS upgrades, extensions, and backup options for your scale set.
On the Advanced tab, configure the availability zone, proximity placement group, accelerated networking, host group, and custom script extension options for your scale set.
On the Tags tab, optionally add tags to your scale set resources.
On the Review + create tab, review your settings and select Create.
