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All my Standard_A0-based web services (extended support) are broken and IPs can't be swapped

Shelly Yomano 20 Reputation points
2026-03-02T22:02:45.88+00:00

Hello.

Starting this morning, it appears that all my cloud services (extended support) that are on Standard_A0 all got in some indeterminate state. When I try to stop/start, I get notified:

Failed to stop the cloud service 'identity-server-7188'. Reason: Allocation failed. VM(s) with the following constraints cannot be allocated, because the condition is too restrictive. Please remove some constraints and try again. Constraints applied are: - VM Size

It seems odd all my Standard_A0 services would be evicted at the same time. I've been trying all day to re-start these services, but they appear to be in a weird state. Note in the message above I get the same error whether I try to stop or start the services.

When I try to deploy replacement services on a different VM type, I am unable to swap the services. I get the following error immediately"

Failed to perform swap between cloud services 'identity-server-7188' and 'eliteidentityserver'. Reason: Invalid public ip address: .

Neither of these things have ever happened before and I'm not sure how to proceed. My customers are very upset.

Azure Cloud Services
Azure Cloud Services

An Azure platform as a service offer that is used to deploy web and cloud applications.

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  1. Jilakara Hemalatha 11,430 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator
    2026-03-02T22:52:23.45+00:00

    Hello Shelly,

    Thank you for reaching out. Based on the error details you have shared:

    Allocation failed. VM(s) with the following constraints cannot be allocated… Constraints applied are: - VM Size

    This indicates a platform-side capacity limitation for the Standard_A0 VM size in the region where your Cloud Services (Extended Support) are deployed.

    Cloud Services (Extended Support) deployments are pinned to a specific Azure cluster at the time of creation. If that cluster no longer has available capacity for the requested VM size or no longer supports that legacy SKU. Azure cannot allocate resources. When this occurs, operations such as Start, Stop, or Restart may all fail with the same allocation error.

    Troubleshoot allocation failures when you create or resize VMs in Azure

    Why the Swap Is Failing:

    The VIP (public IP) swap failure is a side effect of the allocation issue. For a swap to succeed in Cloud Services (Extended Support), both services must be in a healthy, running state with valid public IP associations.

    Since the original cloud service cannot start due to the VM size allocation constraint, Azure cannot validate the public IP resource, resulting in the “Invalid public IP address” error.

    Unfortunately, once a cloud service is blocked by a VM size allocation constraint at the cluster level, there is no supported way to force Azure to reallocate capacity for that same service and VM size. This means the existing Standard_A0–based services cannot be reliably recovered in their current form.

    To restore service as quickly and safely as possible, we recommend the following approach:

    1. Deploy new Cloud Services (Extended Support) using a currently supported VM size (for example, A1_v2, B-series, or D-series depending on regional availability).
    2. Assign new static Public IP addresses during deployment.
    3. Update DNS or routing to redirect traffic to the new deployment.

    Additionally, as Cloud Services (Extended Support) is scheduled for retirement in March 2027 and deprecated in, we strongly recommend planning a migration to a modern platform to avoid similar risks going forward.

    About Azure Cloud Services (extended support)

    Available sizes for Azure Cloud Services (extended support)

    Hope this helps! Please let me know if you have any queries.

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