Looks like Azure as a platform just killed the ability for VM scale operations, due to a change on a storage account ACL that hosted VM extensions. Wow... We noticed when github actions went down, then our self hosted runners because we can't scale anymore.
Information
Active - Virtual Machines and dependent services - Service management issues in multiple regions
Impact statement: As early as 19:46 UTC on 2 February 2026, we are aware of an ongoing issue causing customers to receive error notifications when performing service management operations - such as create, delete, update, scaling, start, stop - for Virtual Machines (VMs) across multiple regions. These issues are also causing impact to services with dependencies on these service management operations - including Azure Arc Enabled Servers, Azure Batch, Azure DevOps, Azure Load Testing, and GitHub. For details on the latter, please see https://www.githubstatus.com.
Current status: We have determined that these issues were caused by a recent configuration change that affected public access to certain Microsoft‑managed storage accounts, used to host extension packages. We are actively working on mitigation, including updating configuration to restore relevant access permissions. We have applied this update in one region so far, and are assessing the extent to which this mitigates customer issues. Our next update will be provided by 22:30 UTC, approximately 60 minutes from now.
Their AI probably hallucinated the configuration change
They've always been terrible at VM ops. I never get weird quota limits and errors in other places. It's almost as if Amazon wants me to be a customer and Microsoft does not.