Boot Diagnostic And Serial Console For Azure VM

There could be a time when your VM doesn't boot up and you don't know the reason. So Azure provides a Boot Diagnostic feature for VM, which can be used to learn about the problems during boot.

What is Boot Diagnostic?

Boot Diagnostic is a debugging feature provided by Azure for VMs which captures the screenshot and console outputs, which can be later used to inspect the problems. Let's say there is a problem with your VM and your VM doesn't boots up or it enters to non-bootable state. Boot Diagnostic screenshots and logs can be used to inspect the problems regarding the boot of your VM.

Benefits of Boot Diagnostics.

• Helps to debug and solve problems during boot.
• Let you know what happened during boot time.
• Saves time.

How to enable Boot Diagnostic on a new VM?

• Go to Azure Portal and go to the virtual machine.
• You can create a new VM. if you don't know how to create a new VM then you can follow this article.
• Go to Management Tab and look for Monitor and you will see boot diagnostic.

• Choose enable with the managed storage account or you can choose to enable with a custom storage account.

• I choose to go with enable with the managed storage account.
• Then click on review and create.

How to access Boot Diagnostic?

• Go to your Virtual machine.
• Go to Support + troubleshooting

• Go to Boot Diagnostic. You will see the screenshot of the machine.

• If you click on the serial log then you will see the logs and even you can download the screenshot and serial log too.

What is Serial Console for Azure VM?

The serial console is a way to interact with your using the command line, You can execute commands on your virtual machine using the serial console.

How to access Serial Console?

Please note that in order to access the serial console Boot Diagnostic must be enabled.

• Go to your Virtual machine.
• Go to Support + troubleshooting
• Go to the Serial console and wait for a minute. You will see the below screen and it is ready to take your command.

Thanks for reading. Stay safe.