Using virtual machine extensions

Once your virtual machine is deployed, it’s ready to be used and configured. In many scenarios, you don’t need to do anything besides installing some basic software needed by your services. However, there are use cases where you need a certain functionality for your virtual machine – this can be implemented in various ways, but very often, the easiest path is by using an extension.

Azure offers a couple of predefined extensions available for most virtual machines. However, availability depends on a couple of factors:

• Region
• Operating system
• Additional capabilities of the virtual machine

The easiest way to learn what is available for your setup is to run the following command in the Azure CLI:

az vm extension image list --location <location> --output table

This command will return a list of available extensions per given location. It’ll also include additional information, such as the name...