Major VM SKU Deprecations and New AKS Extension Rollout | Azure regional availability 2026-07-09

919 new23 regressions20 parked

Daily executive summary

Compared with the 2026-07-08 snapshot, the 2026-07-09 scan recorded 919 new listings, 23 regressions, and 20 parked unknown transitions.

Representative changes: Standard Dc1s V2 VM size was no longer listed in 5 regions; Standard Dc2s V2 VM size was no longer listed in 5 regions; Standard Dc4s V2 VM size was no longer listed in 5 regions.

What changed: 15 first recorded disappearances, 8 recurring disappearances, 919 net-new regional listings.

What this means: Review the 23 regressions against existing regional targets and fallbacks first; treat the 919 new listings as options to validate. These are read-only catalog/list signals, not quota, capacity, or deployment results. Zero new delistings does not establish recovery of earlier missing listings.

7-day context (2026-07-03 to 2026-07-09): across 7 recorded scans, there were 2,639 new listings and 754 regressions. New listings led on 6 scans; regressions led on 1.

Archived commentary and representative evidence

Significant regional regressions were observed for Azure confidential compute VM SKUs (DCv2 series), with Australia East, UK South, UK West, West Europe, and West US all losing vmSkus.standard.dc1s.v2, dc2s.v2, dc4s.v2, and dc8.v2 from their catalogs. These SKUs had been continuously available for 58 days in most regions, with West US showing prior instability (1 disappearance). Coverage dropped from 9 to 4 regions, a 55.6% deprecated coverage rate. Still available fallback regions are australiasoutheast, eastus, northcentralus, and northeurope. For SREs, this means right-sizing, performance, and capacity fallback lists must be urgently rechecked. See VM size overview: https://learn.microsoft.com/azure/virtual-machines/sizes/overview

Azure AI model regressions also hit East Asia, which lost availability for aiModels.openai.gpt-5-2.2025-12-11, gpt-5-5.2026-04-24, and gpt-5.2025-08-07. These models are now only available in 33 of 64 monitored regions, with 7 remaining in Asia. For model deployment targets, latency, and data residency, review fallback model/version choices and placement options. Details: https://learn.microsoft.com/azure/ai-foundry/openai/concepts/models

In contrast, AKS extensionTypes.dcassociatesgroup.nats saw a major first-time rollout, now available in 58 regions including all monitored Oceania and Europe locations. This marks the first observed deployment for this extension, which enables managed cluster capabilities such as GitOps, policy, and observability via Azure Resource Manager-driven installation and lifecycle management. This broad expansion opens up new operational options for AKS clusters. More info: https://learn.microsoft.com/azure/aks/cluster-extensions

Belgium Central also gained Azure Functions Flex Consumption hosting plan and runtime support for .NET (6, 7, 8, 9, 10), Java (11, 17, 21), expanding serverless scale-out options with private networking and memory sizing. This is a regional expansion of existing signals, now covering 81.2% of monitored regions. SREs can now consider Belgium Central for burst scale and lower ops overhead. Details: https://learn.microsoft.com/azure/azure-functions/flex-consumption-plan

Overall, urgent action is required for VM SKU placement and capacity planning due to widespread deprecations, while new AKS and Functions capabilities offer expanded deployment choices.

Engineering context

australiaeast vmSkus.standard.dc1s.v2 available → unavailable deprecation candidate
unavailable 0/58 prior days (0.0%)coverage 4/64 monitored regions (6.2%, -5 regions)coverage removed from 55.6% of prior regionsOceania: 1 current, 2 prior
Still available in australiasoutheast, eastus, northcentralus, northeurope. VM size availability affects right-sizing, performance, cost, and capacity fallback choices. Azure VM sizes
australiaeast vmSkus.standard.dc2s.v2 available → unavailable deprecation candidate
unavailable 0/58 prior days (0.0%)coverage 4/64 monitored regions (6.2%, -5 regions)coverage removed from 55.6% of prior regionsOceania: 1 current, 2 prior
Still available in australiasoutheast, eastus, northcentralus, northeurope. VM size availability affects right-sizing, performance, cost, and capacity fallback choices. Azure VM sizes
australiaeast vmSkus.standard.dc4s.v2 available → unavailable deprecation candidate
unavailable 0/58 prior days (0.0%)coverage 4/64 monitored regions (6.2%, -5 regions)coverage removed from 55.6% of prior regionsOceania: 1 current, 2 prior
Still available in australiasoutheast, eastus, northcentralus, northeurope. VM size availability affects right-sizing, performance, cost, and capacity fallback choices. Azure VM sizes
australiaeast vmSkus.standard.dc8.v2 available → unavailable deprecation candidate
unavailable 0/58 prior days (0.0%)coverage 4/64 monitored regions (6.2%, -5 regions)coverage removed from 55.6% of prior regionsOceania: 1 current, 2 prior
Still available in australiasoutheast, eastus, northcentralus, northeurope. VM size availability affects right-sizing, performance, cost, and capacity fallback choices. Azure VM sizes
eastasia aiModels.openai.gpt-5-2.2025-12-11 available → unavailable deprecation candidate
unavailable 0/58 prior days (0.0%)coverage 33/64 monitored regions (51.6%, -1 region)coverage removed from 2.9% of prior regionsAsia: 7 current, 8 prior
Still available in australiaeast, brazilsouth, canadacentral, canadaeast, centralindia, centralus, and 27 more. Use this to evaluate model capabilities, regional deployment options, latency, and data residency. Azure OpenAI model availability
eastasia aiModels.openai.gpt-5-5.2026-04-24 available → unavailable deprecation candidate
unavailable 0/58 prior days (0.0%)coverage 33/64 monitored regions (51.6%, -1 region)coverage removed from 2.9% of prior regionsAsia: 7 current, 8 prior
Still available in australiaeast, brazilsouth, canadacentral, canadaeast, centralindia, centralus, and 27 more. Use this to evaluate model capabilities, regional deployment options, latency, and data residency. Azure OpenAI model availability
eastasia aiModels.openai.gpt-5.2025-08-07 available → unavailable deprecation candidate
unavailable 0/58 prior days (0.0%)coverage 33/64 monitored regions (51.6%, -1 region)coverage removed from 2.9% of prior regionsAsia: 7 current, 8 prior
Still available in australiaeast, brazilsouth, canadacentral, canadaeast, centralindia, centralus, and 27 more. Use this to evaluate model capabilities, regional deployment options, latency, and data residency. Azure OpenAI model availability
uksouth vmSkus.standard.dc1s.v2 available → unavailable deprecation candidate
unavailable 0/58 prior days (0.0%)coverage 4/64 monitored regions (6.2%, -5 regions)coverage removed from 55.6% of prior regionsEurope: 1 current, 4 prior
Still available in australiasoutheast, eastus, northcentralus, northeurope. VM size availability affects right-sizing, performance, cost, and capacity fallback choices. Azure VM sizes
uksouth vmSkus.standard.dc2s.v2 available → unavailable deprecation candidate
unavailable 0/58 prior days (0.0%)coverage 4/64 monitored regions (6.2%, -5 regions)coverage removed from 55.6% of prior regionsEurope: 1 current, 4 prior
Still available in australiasoutheast, eastus, northcentralus, northeurope. VM size availability affects right-sizing, performance, cost, and capacity fallback choices. Azure VM sizes
uksouth vmSkus.standard.dc4s.v2 available → unavailable deprecation candidate
unavailable 0/58 prior days (0.0%)coverage 4/64 monitored regions (6.2%, -5 regions)coverage removed from 55.6% of prior regionsEurope: 1 current, 4 prior
Still available in australiasoutheast, eastus, northcentralus, northeurope. VM size availability affects right-sizing, performance, cost, and capacity fallback choices. Azure VM sizes