This article references CentOS, a Linux distribution that is End Of Life (EOL) status. Azure Update Manager will soon cease to support it. Please consider your use and planning accordingly. For more information, see the CentOS End-Of-Life guidance.
This article details the Windows and Linux operating systems supported and system requirements for machines or servers managed by Azure Update Manager. The article includes the supported regions and specific versions of the Windows Server and Linux operating systems running on Azure virtual machines (VMs) or machines managed by Azure Arc-enabled servers.
Supported operating systems
Note
All operating systems are assumed to be x64. For this reason, x86 isn't supported for any operating system.
Support for automatic VM Guest patching
If automatic VM guest patching is enabled on a VM, then the available Critical and Security patches are downloaded and applied automatically on the VM.
For VMs created from customized images even if the Patch orchestration mode is set to Azure Orchestrated/AutomaticByPlatform, automatic VM guest patching doesn't work. We recommend that you use scheduled patching to patch the machines by defining your own schedules or install updates on-demand.
Support for Check for Updates/One time Update/Periodic assessment and Scheduled patching
The Azure Marketplace image has the following attributes:
Publisher: The organization that creates the image. Examples are Canonical and MicrosoftWindowsServer.
Offer: The name of the group of related images created by the publisher. Examples are UbuntuServer and WindowsServer.
SKU: An instance of an offer, such as a major release of a distribution. Examples are 18.04LTS and 2019-Datacenter.
Version: The version number of an image SKU.
Update Manager supports the following operating system versions on VMs for all operations except automatic VM guest patching. You might experience failures if there are any configuration changes on the VMs, such as package or repository.
Following is the list of supported images and no other marketplace images released by any other publisher are supported for use with Azure Update Manager.
Sku: gen* Example Publisher: suse Offer: sles-sap-15-sp3-byos sku: gen1-ARM
suse
sles-sap-15-sp2-byos
gen2
talend
talend_re_image
tlnd_re
thorntechnologiesllc
sftpgateway
Sftpgateway
veeam
office365backup
veeamoffice365backup
veeam
veeam-backup-replication
veeam-backup-replication-v11
zscaler
zscaler-private-access
zpa-con-azure
Custom images
We support VMs created from customized images (including images uploaded to Azure Compute gallery) and the following table lists the operating systems that we support for all Azure Update Manager operations except automatic VM guest patching. For instructions on how to use Update Manager to manage updates on VMs created from custom images, see Manage updates for custom images.
As Update Manager depends on your machine's OS package manager or update service, ensure that the Linux package manager or Windows Update client is 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.
Supported regions
Update Manager scales to all regions for both Azure VMs and Azure Arc-enabled servers. The following table lists the Azure public cloud where you can use Update Manager.
For Azure VMs only For Azure VMs only For Azure VMs only For both Azure VMs and Azure Arc-enabled servers For both Azure VMs and Azure Arc-enabled servers For both Azure VMs and Azure Arc-enabled servers.
Update Manager supports operating system updates for both Windows and Linux.
Update Manager doesn't support driver updates.
Extended Security Updates (ESU) for Windows Server
Using Azure Update Manager, you can deploy Extended Security Updates for your Azure Arc-enabled Windows Server 2012 / R2 machines. ESUs are available by default to Azure Virtual machines. To enroll in Windows Server 2012 Extended Security Updates on Arc connected machines, follow the guidance on How to get Extended Security Updates (ESU) for Windows Server 2012 and 2012 R2 via Azure Arc.
Microsoft application updates on Windows
By default, the Windows Update client is configured to provide updates only for the 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. Updates include security patches for Microsoft SQL Server and other Microsoft software.
Use one of the following options to perform the settings change at scale:
• For all Windows Servers running on an earlier operating system than Windows Server 2016, run the following PowerShell script on the server you want to change:
• For servers running Windows Server 2016 or later, you can use Group Policy to control this process by downloading and using the latest Group Policy Administrative template files.
Note
Run the following PowerShell script on the server to disable Microsoft applications updates:
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.
Third party application updates are supported in Azure Update Manager. 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 isn't available for assessment and installation if you remove it.
As Update Manager depends on your machine's OS package manager or update service, ensure that the Linux package manager or Windows Update client is 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.
Update Manager is a unified service that helps manage and govern updates for all your machines. It allows you to monitor Windows and Linux update compliance across Azure and on-premises from a single dashboard.
As a Windows Server hybrid administrator, you integrate Windows Server environments with Azure services and manage Windows Server in on-premises networks.