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My Linux box on Azure often experiences a blocking problem: it stops responding and if I'm so lucky to be already in SSH I get that the file system has been mounted into readonly mode. The only solution seems to reboot the machine from Azure VM Control Panel, since issuing init 6 returns that it's impossible to write to disk. Rebooting from CP takes a long time and throws an error, after which the server is forcefully reset.

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1 Answer 1

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This appears to be a widespread problem in Azure VM Preview, for which Microsoft doesn't currently offer support or SLA.

Solution 1

Reported to not always work: perform a hard reboot with VM relocation. From Azure CP delete the virtual machine along with the associated cloud service, then recreate it using the untouched disk image. This usually recreates the machine onto a different cluster than the previous, so you have chances of not experiencing the problem anymore. Pay attention that you will experience about half an hour downtime and don't delete the VHD in order not to lose all your work/data/configured applications

Solution 2

Until Microsoft fixes the problem: schedule a daily reboot via cron like this: 0 3 * * * /sbin/shutdown -r now #Reboot.

This causes a deterministic downtime of a couple of minutes. You can avoid this if you run your servers in load balancing by scheduling reboots among different servers at different times of the day: this assures service continuity

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You forgot Solution 3. Find a better cloud service that supports Linux. –  3dinfluence Oct 15 '12 at 23:44

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