How turn off Windows Azure VM Automatic Updates

Question

I have a VM with

$vm = Get-AzVM -ResourceGroupName $rgName -Name $vmName     
$vm.OSProfile.WindowsConfiguration.PatchSettings.PatchMode
>> AutomaticByOS
$vm.OSProfile.WindowsConfiguration.EnableAutomaticUpdates
>> True

Can I somehow change it to a manual patch orchestration? This command fails

$vm.OSProfile.WindowsConfiguration.EnableAutomaticUpdates = $False
$vm.OSProfile.WindowsConfiguration.PatchSettings.PatchMode =  "Manual"
Update-AzVM -ResourceGroupName $resourceGroupName -VM $vm

Update-AzVM: Changing property 'windowsConfiguration.enableAutomaticUpdates' is not allowed.
ErrorCode: PropertyChangeNotAllowed
ErrorMessage: Changing property 'windowsConfiguration.enableAutomaticUpdates' is not allowed.
ErrorTarget: windowsConfiguration.enableAutomaticUpdates
StatusCode: 409
ReasonPhrase: 
OperationID : 59cf8ced-e3b6-4b23-bb33-4089e5ecefe4

And I cannot find settings in the Portal for it.

Answer 1

@Jan Vávra

Unfortunately these values are not able to be changed once the VM is created. If you require changing these values you will need to recreate the VM. Details about this can be on the Automatic VM guest patching for Azure VMs page:

For Windows VMs, the property osProfile.windowsConfiguration.enableAutomaticUpdates can only be set when the VM is first created. This impacts certain patch mode transitions. Switching between AutomaticByPlatform and Manual modes is supported on VMs that have osProfile.windowsConfiguration.enableAutomaticUpdates=false. Similarly switching between AutomaticByPlatform and AutomaticByOS modes is supported on VMs that have osProfile.windowsConfiguration.enableAutomaticUpdates=true. Switching between AutomaticByOS and Manual modes is not supported.

Sorry for the bad news. Let me know if you need more assistance or have more questions.

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