Azure Cloud Service - Change Default Guest OS Windows Version via Service Configuration file

Azure Cloud Services use Windows 2008 Server R2 operating system by default.

 

How do you override your Azure Cloud Service to use Windows 2012 Server R2 or other operating system? You could manually change it via the Azure web interface but then each time you deploy your cloud service it will be overwritten.

 

To automate this you can update osFamily value in the Service Configuration file for your web role.

 

- Windows 2008 Server R2 = 2

- Windows 2012 Server = 3

- Windows 2012 Server R2 = 4

<ServiceConfiguration serviceName="TestCloudService"xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ServiceHosting/2008/10/ServiceConfiguration"osFamily="4" osVersion="*" schemaVersion="2014-01.2.3">