r/azuredevops

Hello everyone,

I am planning to upgrade our current DevOps environment to the latest Version (Upgrade path is given by Microsoft Docs).

Unfortunately, we don't have a second environment to test the upgrade so maybe someone of you has some experience.

What we do have is that the Machine where our Azure DevOps instance is running is fully virtualized. We can do snapshots and restore. (HyperV)

Our instance unfortunately still uses XAML Builds for an legacy application that is still used by a lot of customers and is Business critical. These are sre not easy to migrate and are highly intertwined with business logic and some other dependecies. In Short: A Nightmare. We also use Classic Pipelines and Releases.

I know that XAML Builds are deprecated, but i inherited the Environment and the old engineer that build the whole Thing is not in the company anymore. So it is still kind of a "blackbox".

We could just snapshot the Environment before the upgrade and rollback. Never done it, but i think it should work if shit would hit the fan.

Does anyone have experience with Upgrading to a newer Version and XAML Builds?

What would be the best approach here?

Hey all, Microsoft published a new article on the Azure VM lifecycle policy early this week. Modernizing to newer SKUs isn't a simple SKU swap. Some of the VMs running on older generations need a Generation 2 conversion first, plus NVMe and MANA support in the OS image, so a Gen1 VM is a BIOS to UEFI change rather than a resize.

Azure Advisor's Service Retirement workbook is the starting point for seeing what's affected. I wanted a per-VM view of what each one would actually take, so I created this workbook to simplify the VM lifecycle planning. It joins each VM to its managed OS disk, reads the actual hyperVGeneration, and scores readiness per VM rather than per SKU.

On my test fleet two VMs on the same retiring size scored 85 and 35. One was already Gen2, the other needs the conversion first. Same SKU, different amount of work.

It covers 628 sizes with recommended targets, the prerequisites each move triggers, and a suggested migration order. Read-only Resource Graph queries, Reader permission, no agent or workspace. MIT.

https://github.com/krishna-sunkavalli/vm-retirement-workbook

Lifecycle policy announcement: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/enhancing-microsoft-azure-virtual-machine-lifecycle/

Lifecycle stages on Learn: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/sizes/lifecycle/lifecycle-overview

Experience with XAML Builds in Azure DevOps 2020 on prem Upgrade to latest Azure DevOps Version

Azure VM Lifecycle Management Workbook