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Support matrix for Azure Update Manager

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This article details the Windows and Linux operating systems supported and system requirements for machines or servers managed by Update Manager including the supported regions and specific versions of the Windows Server and Linux operating systems running on Azure VMs or machines managed by Arc-enabled servers.

Update sources supported

Windows: Windows Update Agent (WUA) reports to Microsoft Update by default, but you can configure it to report to Windows Server Update Services (WSUS). If you configure WUA to report to WSUS, based on the WSUS's last synchronization with Microsoft update, the results in the Update Manager might differ to what the Microsoft update shows. You can specify sources for scanning and downloading updates using specify intranet Microsoft Update service location. To restrict machines to the internal update service, see Do not connect to any Windows Update Internet locations

Linux: You can configure Linux machines to report to a local or public YUM or APT package repository. The results shown in Update Manager depend on where the machines are configured to report.

Types of updates supported

Operating system updates

Update Manager supports operating system updates for both Windows and Linux.

Note

Update Manager doesn't support driver Updates.

First party updates on Windows

By default, the Windows Update client is configured to provide updates only for Windows operating system. If you enable the Give me updates for other Microsoft products when I update Windows setting, you also receive updates for other Microsoft products, including security patches for Microsoft SQL Server and other Microsoft software.

Use one of the following options to perform the settings change at scale:

  • For Servers configured to patch on a schedule from Update Manager (that has the VM PatchSettings set to AutomaticByPlatform = Azure-Orchestrated), and for all Windows Servers running on an earlier operating system than server 2016, Run the following PowerShell script on the server you want to change.

    $ServiceManager = (New-Object -com "Microsoft.Update.ServiceManager")
$ServiceManager.Services
$ServiceID = "7971f918-a847-4430-9279-4a52d1efe18d"
$ServiceManager.AddService2($ServiceId,7,"")

  • For servers running Server 2016 or later which aren't using Update Manager scheduled patching (that has the VM PatchSettings set to AutomaticByOS = Azure-Orchestrated) you can use Group Policy to control this by downloading and using the latest Group Policy Administrative template files.

Note

Run the following PowerShell script on the server to disable first party updates.

$ServiceManager = (New-Object -com "Microsoft.Update.ServiceManager")  
$ServiceManager.Services 
$ServiceID = "7971f918-a847-4430-9279-4a52d1efe18d"
$ServiceManager.RemoveService($ServiceId)

Third-party updates

Windows: Update Manager relies on the locally configured update repository to update supported Windows systems, either WSUS or Windows Update. Tools such as System Center Updates Publisher allow you to import and publish custom updates with WSUS. This scenario allows Update Manager to update machines that use Configuration Manager as their update repository with third-party software. To learn how to configure Updates Publisher, see Install Updates Publisher.

Linux: If you include a specific third party software repository in the Linux package manager repository location, it's scanned when it performs software update operations. The package won't be available for assessment and installation if you remove it.

Note

Update Manager does not support managing the Microsoft Configuration Manager client.

Supported regions

Update Manager will scale to all regions for both Azure VMs and Azure Arc-enabled servers. Listed below are the Azure public cloud where you can use Update Manager.

Azure Update Manager is available in all Azure public regions where compute virtual machines are available.

Supported operating systems

Note

  • All operating systems are assumed to be x64. x86 isn't supported for any operating system.
  • Update Manager doesn't support CIS hardened images.

Note

Currently, Azure Update Manager has the following limitation regarding the operating system support:

  • Specialized images and VMs created by Azure Migrate, Azure Backup, Azure Site Recovery aren't fully supported for now. However, you can use on-demand operations such as one-time update and check for updates in Update Manager.

For the above limitation, we recommend that you use Automation Update management till the support is available in Update Manager.

Marketplace/PIR images

The Marketplace image in Azure has the following attributes:

  • Publisher - The organization that creates the image. Examples: Canonical, MicrosoftWindowsServer
  • Offer- The name of the group of related images created by the publisher. Examples: UbuntuServer, WindowsServer
  • SKU- An instance of an offer, such as a major release of a distribution. Examples: 18.04LTS, 2019-Datacenter
  • Version - The version number of an image SKU.

Azure Update Manager supports the following operating system versions. However, you could experience failures if there are any configuration changes on the VMs such as package or repository.

Windows operating systems

Publisher Versions(s)
Microsoft Windows Server 1709, 1803, 1809, 2012, 2016, 2019, 2022
Microsoft Windows Server HPC Pack 2012, 2016, 2019
Microsoft SQL Server 2008, 2012, 2014, 2016, 2017, 2019, 2022
Microsoft Visual Studio ws2012r2, ws2016, ws2019, ws2022
Microsoft Azure Site Recovery Windows 2012
Microsoft Biz Talk Server 2016, 2020
Microsoft DynamicsAx ax7
Microsoft Power BI 2016, 2017, 2019, 2022
Microsoft Sharepoint sp*

Linux operating systems

Publisher Versions(s)
Canonical Ubuntu 16.04, 18.04, 20.04, 22.04
RedHat RHEL 7,8,9
Openlogic CentOS 7
SUSE 12 sles, sles-byos, sap, sap-byos, sapcal, sles-standard
SUSE 15 basic, hpc, opensuse, sles, sap, sapcal
Oracle Linux 7*, ol7*, ol8*, ol9*
Oracle Database 21, 19-0904, 18.*

Unsupported Operating systems

The following table lists the operating systems for marketplace images that aren't supported:

Publisher OS Offer SKU
OpenLogic CentOS 8*
OpenLogic centos-hpc *
Oracle Oracle-Linux 8, 8-ci, 81, 81-ci , 81-gen2, ol82, ol8_2-gen2,ol82-gen2, ol83-lvm, ol83-lvm-gen2, ol84-lvm,ol84-lvm-gen2
Red Hat RHEL 74-gen2
Red Hat RHEL-HANA 7.4, 7.5, 7.6, 8.1, 81_gen2
Red Hat RHEL-SAP 7.4, 7.5, 7.7
Red Hat RHEL-SAP-HANA 7.5
Microsoft SQL Server SQL 2019-SLES* *
Microsoft SQL Server SQL 2019-RHEL7 *
Microsoft SQL Server SQL 2017-RHEL7 *
Microsoft microsoft-ads .
SUSE sles-sap-15-*-byos gen *

Custom images

We support generalized custom images. Table below lists the operating systems that we support for generalized images. Refer to custom images (preview) for instructions on how to start using Update Manager to manage updates on custom images.

Windows Operating System
Windows Server 2022
Windows Server 2019
Windows Server 2016
Windows Server 2012 R2
Windows Server 2012
Windows Server 2008 R2 (RTM and SP1 Standard)
Linux Operating System
CentOS 7, 8
Oracle Linux 7.x, 8x
Red Hat Enterprise 7, 8, 9
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12.x, 15.0-15.4
Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, 18.04 LTS, 20.04 LTS, 22.04 LTS

Unsupported Operating systems

The following table lists the operating systems that aren't supported:

Operating system Notes
Windows client For client operating systems such as Windows 10 and Windows 11, we recommend Microsoft Intune to manage updates.
Virtual machine scale sets We recommend that you use Automatic upgrades to patch the virtual machine scale sets.
Azure Kubernetes Nodes We recommend the patching described in Apply security and kernel updates to Linux nodes in Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS).

As the Azure Update Manager depends on your machine's OS package manager or update service, ensure that the Linux package manager, or Windows Update client are enabled and can connect with an update source or repository. If you're running a Windows Server OS on your machine, see configure Windows Update settings.

Next steps