Windows Azure Guest Agent in failover scenario

Question

Hi.
When doing a failover from Hyper-V to Azure the Azure VM agent is not automatically installed. The agent is important for extensions and executing scripts inside the vm after failover.
I found some hints that in a VMWare to Azure failover scenario there seems to be half of the solution (Azure VM agent preinstalled OnPremise but disabled), but enabling the agent after failover is still manually … ?
I cannot find any guidance how to deal with that situation in a Hyper-V to Azure failover scenario. I do not want to install the agent manually on every vm during a failover and do not like the idea to implement a workaround like hybrid worker, GPO or similar solution. I would like to handle it fully automated and somehow inside the ASR process.

I think of the following solution:

• Install the agent on all asr protected vms OnPremise
• Implement a scheduled task on system startup that does the following:
• Check it the vm is running OnPremise or in Azure by accessing 168.63.129.16 over port 80
• Disable the 3 services (rdagent, WindowsAzureGuestAgent, WindowsAzureTelemetryService) when vm is running OnPremise
• Enable and start the 3 services when vm is running in Azure

Questions:

• Do I miss something, or is this really so complicated?
• Is my solution vital? Is installing the Azure VM agent on non azure vms supported?
• Isn’t there an easier solution? I would have expected it would be automatically …

Best regards
Andreas

Answer 1

Thank you all for your feedback.

@SadiqhAhmed-MSFT
My question is not about enabling replication.

@olufemia-MSFT
All extensions depend on the "Windows Azure Guest Agent". And from all I can find in the docs, the only way to get this agent installed is executing the MSI inside the VM. I am not aware of any method doing things inside the VMs guest OS from the Azure management when the "Windows Azure Guest Agent" is not installed. Or do I miss something?

I have put my solution in place, and it seams to be working fine so far.

But I would appriciate that ASR would handle the installation of the "Windows Azure Guest Agent" itself.

Best regards
Andreas