Windows Azure - Stuck on Running (Provisioning) when creating VM from custom created image in gallery

Question

I have problem when creating VM from a custom created image in gallery. Image is a domain controller. Stuck on Running (Provisioning). I captured the image after sysprep etc.

But when I create VM from an image which is a none domain controller(stand alone) image, it works fine.

Is it because the server is a domain controller? And when you create VM from an image, the Azure ask you to write the administrator username name and password, it is not possible to fill a domain user like "domain\user"

Any idea?

score 8 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 31 '14 at 08:26

There was an issue for a while where running sysprep /shutdown on Azure causes this behaviour - could it be down to how/when the images were created? -

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/windowsazure/en-US/fafb9ee6-1e57-46ba-8440-27467ad986cf/image-capture-issue-vm-unexpectedly-started-after-guestinitiated-shutdown?forum=WAVirtualMachinesforWindows

....If you capture a VM that has been started after sysprep has been run, the guest OS is not in the correct state. The capture operation will succeed, but VMs created from the image will fail to provision successfully, and will ultimately show status Provisioning timed out.

The issue had since been resolved, but it may explain the difference if one image was created at that time once the other hadn't.

To answer your second question - you can't create a new VM AND set it to join a domain at at the same time from the portal but you CAN do that in powershell - Add-AzureProvisioningConfig which you would use with New-AzureVMConfig to create a configuration you would feed into New-AzureVM has switches to provide domain information - name, user and password.

So, I must use Powershell to create the domain controller VM from gallery? Can't be done on portal? — Theepan Karthigesan, Jan 31 '14 at 19:20
No, not quite what I meant :-) - you can't provision a new VM and set it to domain join from the portal, but you can when using powershell. I never tried to create a sysprepped image of a domain controller so can't comment, but I suspect the issue you were having is due to the image created when there was an issue with Azure which, I believe, is no longer there. — Yossi Dahan, Jan 31 '14 at 21:29

score 4 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 11 '14 at 15:26

I just learned some hard lesson for capturing image and creating VM from image at Azure. So basically, there are 2 things:

we need to follow the instruction listed at post How to Capture an Image of a Virtual Machine Running Windows Server which has link to Image capture issue / VM unexpectedly started after guest-initiated shutdown as well.
sysprep won't work at domain controller. Sysprep is allowed to run on domain controller, we could create the VM from captured images as well, however it would stuck at the running (provision) until it times out and there is no way to access the machine via RDP. Generally, if the VM is working, RDP access to the machine should be working even if VM status is still at running (provision) (still need to wait a few minutes when status is changed that status)

thanks for the second info, as it forwarded me to the right path. I found out that it was not a big problem that is was saying "provisioning timed out" and I still could've rdp it. I was only using the wrong hostname in the username for rdp credentials. — Beytan Kurt, Nov 20 '14 at 19:14

Windows Azure - Stuck on Running (Provisioning) when creating VM from custom created image in gallery

2 Answers2