B1s sized server unavailable for needed school vm project

Question

I am trying to create 6 vms for my school projects. I have previously been unable to sign up for a student discount and was recommended to take a free trial with $200 credit. When I try to create my vms, I am not allowed the 1G versions that I need to use on my project. I would like to know what zones to use on this subscription that have it available. It is the B1 or b2 size.

Answer 1

Hello Joshua,

The free VM size B1s (B-series v1) is being retired in many Azure regions and is now only available in limited quantities.

Source: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/explore/global-infrastructure/products-by-region/table

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How to check:

Go to Subscription > Usage + Quotas > and look for the B-series quota details.

Subscription and quota notes:

You can confirm availability by navigating to Azure Portal → Subscriptions → Usage + quotas.

• If the B-series quota isn’t available, you can request access by submitting a support ticket.
• Free Trial subscriptions can’t request quota increases, so retired or restricted SKUs like Standard_B1s can’t be enabled in those subscriptions.

Reference: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/quotas/per-vm-quota-requests

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Solution:

Microsoft suggests using the newer B-series v2 (Bsv2) VM sizes, which are supported and available in more regions.

For Windows VM: try B2ATS

For Linux VM: try B2ATS, and B2PTS

All of these are free of charge (750 hours per month) if used with a P6 (64GiB) managed disk.

Source: https://marketplace.microsoft.com/en-us/product/azure-services/microsoft.freeaccountvirtualmachine?tab=overview

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Answer 2

B1s/B2s availability depends on both the region and the subscription type. On some subscriptions (including Free Trial and some student/dev offers), certain VM size families like B1s/B2s can be:

• Not offered in that region at all, or
• Restricted for that specific subscription in that region.

To proceed, use these steps:

1. Check which regions offer B-family sizes
   • B-family (including B1s/B2s) is a general-purpose VM family that is available only in selected regions and hardware clusters. If a size is not available in a region, deployments with that size will fail with an error like: The requested VM size Standard_X is not available in the current region.
   • In that case, the resolution is to either:
     • Choose a different region where the size is available, or
     • Choose a different VM size that is available in the current region.
2. Check availability for the subscription
   • Some VM sizes can be marked as Restricted for a subscription in a given region. If a size is restricted, it cannot be used in that region with that subscription.
   • Where available (for example, in tools like Azure Lab Services or CycleCloud), check the VM size list for the region and verify that the Restricted column is not set to true for the B1s/B2s sizes.
3. Try alternative general-purpose sizes
   • If B1s/B2s remain unavailable in the regions allowed for the Free Trial subscription, use another general-purpose size that is available (for example, A-family or D-family) that meets the project’s CPU and memory requirements.
   • B-family is optimized for burstable workloads and uses a CPU credit model, but for most school projects any small general-purpose size (A-family, D-family, etc.) will work functionally as long as CPU and RAM are sufficient.
4. If no suitable size is available
   • If none of the required sizes are available in any of the regions that the subscription can use, open a support request from the Azure portal and ask whether B1s/B2s can be enabled for the subscription in a specific region, or which alternative sizes are supported for that subscription.

Because region/size availability is subscription-specific and not listed in the provided context by exact region, the concrete list of zones/regions that have B1s/B2s for this Free Trial subscription must be obtained directly from the portal or CLI for that subscription.

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References:

• Bv1 sizes series
• 'B' family general purpose VM size series
• Common issues: Unavailable virtual machine SKU
• Sizes for virtual machines in Azure