1
00:00:00,840 --> 00:00:04,740
Now let's troubleshoot Azure VM boot failures.

2
00:00:04,740 --> 00:00:07,810
Now, these are never good things to see in Azure, again,

3
00:00:07,810 --> 00:00:12,380
speaking of the fact that we don't have the level of access to the host

4
00:00:12,380 --> 00:00:17,160
hardware that we do with our on‑premises datacenters. You certainly don't

5
00:00:17,160 --> 00:00:20,540
want your Windows Azure VMs to blue screen,

6
00:00:20,540 --> 00:00:24,930
but it happens. Likewise, if you're using Azure Disk Encryption,

7
00:00:24,930 --> 00:00:30,740
you don't want to have a BitLocker recovery screen happen on your Azure VMs.

8
00:00:30,740 --> 00:00:33,690
Well, you might be thinking right off the top, how in the world would I

9
00:00:33,690 --> 00:00:38,720
know? Let's say that my Azure VM is in BitLocker recovery, or let's say

10
00:00:38,720 --> 00:00:43,080
that it is blue screened, how can I verify that?

11
00:00:43,080 --> 00:00:45,940
Well, the answer to that is boot diagnostics. Boot

12
00:00:45,940 --> 00:00:48,280
diagnostics is a property you can enable.

13
00:00:48,280 --> 00:00:49,920
It requires a storage account.

14
00:00:49,920 --> 00:00:50,340
Why?

15
00:00:50,340 --> 00:00:54,110
Because boot diagnostics stores its diagnostics data in

16
00:00:54,110 --> 00:00:56,530
that storage account. Specifically,

17
00:00:56,530 --> 00:00:59,420
you'll find that boot diagnostics periodically takes

18
00:00:59,420 --> 00:01:02,540
console screenshots of the virtual machine.

19
00:01:02,540 --> 00:01:06,750
So you can see on a Windows Server VM that press Ctrl+Alt+Delete to

20
00:01:06,750 --> 00:01:10,190
sign in, which is what you normally want to see. If you're in

21
00:01:10,190 --> 00:01:14,680
BitLocker recovery or blue screen, those states will show up in

22
00:01:14,680 --> 00:01:19,040
those images, all right? Another troubleshooting tool is the

23
00:01:19,040 --> 00:01:21,590
Microsoft Azure Serial Console,

24
00:01:21,590 --> 00:01:25,970
which gives you essentially backdoor console access to your virtual machine,

25
00:01:25,970 --> 00:01:30,780
can be very helpful if the machine is in a blue screen or BitLocker recovery

26
00:01:30,780 --> 00:01:33,950
state. And in order to use Serial Console,

27
00:01:33,950 --> 00:01:37,080
you have to have boot diagnostics enabled first as a

28
00:01:37,080 --> 00:01:39,210
dependency, all right? So again,

29
00:01:39,210 --> 00:01:42,620
we'll look at Serial Console in the demo upcoming. It's

30
00:01:42,620 --> 00:01:46,560
going to give you VM access independent of the network or

31
00:01:46,560 --> 00:01:53,000
operating system state of the VM. It's a very good and important tool for you to have in your tool bag.