Adding additional NICs to a Virtual Machine in Azure? - azure

Question

Is it true, that even for Virtual Machine's created in the latest platform (ARM), that if you initially created the machine with 1 NIC, that there is no way to add additional NICs to the VM?
I found a few random (non-Microsoft) articles that seem to indicate this is the case, which if so... is kind of retarded.
So I wanted to make sure that I'm understanding this correctly.
If I have to start all over and build a new machine just to add a NIC, I might consider just using Amazon AWS as I can't imagine this being a limitation over there.

Answer 1

that if you initially created the machine with 1 NIC, that there is no
way to add additional NICs to the VM
It is true, there is no way to add a NIC to an existing VM, and we can't via portal to create a VM with multiple NICs. But we can create/recreate the VM via powershell and add another NIC to it. Here is the powershell script:
$rg = "jason-newgroup"
$loc = "japan east"
$nic01 = "nic01"
$nic02 = "nic02"
$vnet = Get-AzureRmVirtualNetwork -Name ‘jason-newgroup-vnet’ -ResourceGroupName ‘jason-newgroup’
$sub01id = (Get-AzureRmVirtualNetworkSubnetConfig -Name ‘sub01’ -VirtualNetwork $vnet).Id
$sub02id = (Get-AzureRmVirtualNetworkSubnetConfig -Name ‘sub02’ -VirtualNetwork $vnet).Id
$ip1 = '10.1.0.5'
$ip2 = '10.1.1.5'
$nic1 = New-AzureRmNetworkInterface -Name $nic01 -ResourceGroupName $rg -Location $loc -SubnetId $sub01id -PrivateIpAddress $ip1
$nic2 = New-AzureRmNetworkInterface -Name $nic02 -ResourceGroupName $rg -Location $loc -SubnetId $sub02id -PrivateIpAddress $ip2
$vmsize = "Standard_DS4_v2"
$vmname = "jason-windows"
$vm = New-AzureRmVMConfig -VMName $vmname -VMSize $vmsize
$VM = Add-AzureRmVMNetworkInterface -VM $VM -Id $nic1.Id -Primary
$VM = Add-AzureRmVMNetworkInterface -VM $VM -Id $nic2.Id
$osDiskName = "jason-newtest"
$osDiskVhdUri = "https://jasonnewgroupdisks717.blob.core.windows.net/vhds/jason-windows2016920165635.vhd"
$vm = Set-AzureRmVMOSDisk -VM $vm -VhdUri $osDiskVhdUri -name $osDiskName -CreateOption attach -windows
New-AzureRmVM -ResourceGroupName $rg -Location $loc -VM $vm
Notice:
The VM size determines the number of NICS that you can create for a VM. More information about how many NICS each VM size supports, please refer to the link below:
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/virtual-machines-windows-sizes/

Answer 2

There is an update to this. You can now add nics to existing Azure VMs. See the documentation here for tutorial - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-network/virtual-network-network-interface-vm