hare krsna,
i just received the following email from microsoft:
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Migrate to new Microsoft Marketplace Windows Server 2022 images by 9 June 2026
You’re receiving this notification because you’re associated with one or more Azure subscriptions that use Marketplace Windows Server 2022 images. For reference, you can find this notification in the Azure portal under Service Health/Health advisories using tracking ID: 8PJS-_48.
In October 2024, we communicated incoming changes for Marketplace Windows Server 2022 images. Aligned with that communication, on 9 June 2026 we’ll deprecate Marketplace Windows Server 2022 images preinstalled with .NET 6, which has reached end of support. Migrate to the new Windows Server 2022 images under the new offer (offerID=windowsserver2022) with the following SKU(s) to avoid disruptions:
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2022-DATACENTER
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2022-DATACENTER-AZURE-EDITION
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2022-DATACENTER-AZURE-EDITION-CORE
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2022-DATACENTER-AZURE-EDITION-CORE-SMALLDISK
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2022-DATACENTER-AZURE-EDITION-HOTPATCH
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2022-DATACENTER-AZURE-EDITION-HOTPATCH-SMALLDISK
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2022-DATACENTER-AZURE-EDITION-SMALLDISK
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2022-DATACENTER-CORE
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2022-DATACENTER-CORE-G2
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2022-DATACENTER-CORE-SMALLDISK
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2022-DATACENTER-CORE-SMALLDISK-G2
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2022-DATACENTER-G2
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2022-DATACENTER-SMALLDISK
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2022-DATACENTER-SMALLDISK-G2
Recommended action
To avoid disruptions and maintain compliance, migrate to new Marketplace Windows Server 2022 images under the new offer by 9 June 2026. Review the .NET 6 image migration guidance for more information about the migration process, how to determine whether your subscriptions contain impacted images, and where to find the new images.
this affects the servers on which our discourse instances are running. we’ll have to migrate to newer, costlier versions i’m afraid. @Pancharatna.das do you know, or know someone who knows, azure servers well enough to decide which option to go for?
getting into the azure portal today i find that we may have some more time before we have to migrate those discourse servers:
Recommendation details
Azure Virtual Machine (VM) series F, Fs, Fsv2, Lsv2, G, Gs, Av2, and B are retiring. The VM series are no longer available for use or purchase. Applications and workloads currently operating on VM types must be migrated to newer VM series.Learn more
Retirement date11/15/2028
Retiring featureLSv2, G, GS, F, FS, Fsv2, B, Av2 - Series
Potential benefits
Avoid service disruptions by proactively migrating workloads
retirement date is 11/15/2028, which is quite a bit in the future. i didn’t get into the details of available options to migrate to, but don’t believe that things will get cheaper – rather the opposite.
i’m not experiencing any problems with the current servers, and even though they aren’t used by many members yet, i don’t expect there to be difficulties. not very many will want to use them exactly simultaneously. so for now i suggest to leave things as they are.
i have been looking into available azure servers, and it looks as if we have to go from 1 to 2 CPUs with a minimum of 4 instead of 2 GB Ram. i didn’t get into calculating the actual price yet, but i assume that will at least double as well.
what we could do would be to host both discourse instances on the same server. that’s possible it seems, placing them behind a nginx proxy that connects both of them to the network. would require some fiddling around, but, as of now, this seems to be the best option to me.
@Pancharatna.das: so i got two different info’s from M$: that the servers have to migrate by 9 june 2026, and that the retirement date is 15 november 2028.
in any case, if that happens, that M$ retires the servers while we are still using them, it’s still possible to migrate them to a newer version.
since that newer version will cost us more than what we pay now, and will take several hours of work, my conclusion is to hope for the best and keep using them until the later date.
in the meantime i’m continuing the switch to the new URL, https:istagosthi.org, which should be done today some time. instead of changing the existing discourse instance to the new URL, risking some left-over remnants in the DB, i’ll set it up again at the new address.