Azure vmss without a load balancer

Question

My requirement is to scale vm instance (linux based custom image) based on CPU usage. Tried to follow steps mentioned in VMSS (virtual machine scale sets : https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machine-scale-sets/virtual-machine-scale-sets-linux-autoscale), but it creates a LB in front which we don't want. Is it possible to avoid LB in vmss ?

If VMSS without LB is not the option, is there any other way in azure to do this ? I am able to achieve this in AWS (using autoscale group) and GCP (instance group), so trying to get similar functionality in Azure.

hp

Answer 1

Pass empty id as a load-balancer

az vmss create -n myname -g mygroup --load-balancer "" --public-ip-per-vm --image UbuntuLTS

Answer 2

In powershell to make this work you need to provide both double quotes wrapped in single quotes: --load-balancer '""'

az vmss -n myName -g myGroup --load-balancer '""' --image UbuntuLTS

Answer 3

Public IP per VM in a scale set is not supported today but is on the roadmap. If you submit a support request (e.g. from the question mark in the top-right of the azure portal), we can keep you informed on the timeline :).

Answer 4

Though a load balancer is created when you create a VM scale set in the portal, other modes supporting external connectivity to scale sets include:

• Create a separate VM with a public IP address in the same VNET as the scale set which can route connections to the scale set VMs (also known as a jump box). E.g. https://github.com/Azure/azure-quickstart-templates/tree/master/201-vmss-windows-jumpbox or https://github.com/Azure/azure-quickstart-templates/tree/master/201-vmss-linux-jumpbox

• Assign a public IP address to each VM in the scale set. This feature is currently in limited preview. See here for more details: https://github.com/gbowerman/azure-myriad/tree/master/publicip-dns