how do I create a VM on South Brazil on Azure? - azure

Question

When creating a VM on azure portal, the location option does not list South Brazil, but the Azure pricing page lists South Brazil prices.
I am trying to create a Windows Server 2012 R2 Datacenter VM.
Is South Brazil available? What do I have to do to enable this location?
Thank you.

Answer 1

The default Regions that are available to a subscription are based on availability of resources at the time and whether the Region is 'generally available'; for example, originally, Brazil South was only available to Paid Subscriptions (e.g. not trial, BizSpark, MSDN credits etc).
If there is a Region that is missing from your Subscription, you can contact Billing Support (which is included free with your subscription), and open a ticket requesting access to that Region.
http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/support/options/
Or, you can do so through the Azure Portal.
I have performed this myself, as my two Subscriptions (BizSpark, MSDN) were both created in Brazil, but neither included access to the Brazil South Region.
Billing Support managed the process of gaining access to Brazil South for my Subscriptions - they will open an internal ticket with Capacity Planning, who will perform the actual resolution. The process is zero cost.
Response time in my case was less than one hour from requesting assistance from Billing Support, to having the ticket created with Capacity Planning. The Capacity Planning department subsequently enabled Brazil South for my subscriptions within one business day.
NOTE: It should be borne in mind that not all services are available in all Regions; for example products that are in beta such as Premium Storage, the latest Tiers of Virtual Machines, etc, are restricted to one or two Regions before they become generally available. Brazil South is one of the newer Regions, and therefore is slightly behind in terms of services that are available.

Answer 2

These are the locations that I have available for Windows Server 2012 R2 Datacenter (I added the bold to Brazil South):
LOCATIONS
East Asia;Southeast Asia;Australia East;Australia Southeast;Brazil South;North Europe;West Europe;Japan East;Japan West;Central US;East US;East US 2;North Central US;South Central US;West US
The option to choose Brazil South occurs on the 4th page of the VM setup, assuming you choose Create from a Gallery Image. Steps are outlined below:
From Portal Homepage, Click NEW (Bottom Right)
Choose > Compute > Virtual Machine > From Gallery
note: Brazil South may also be available in the Quick Create option as well as from Gallery, but Gallery gives more options for the setup.
From Page One Choose the Windows Server 2012 R2 Datacenter Image (top of the list for me). Click the next arrow bottom right.
From Page 2, enter size, name, Tier, and Administrative user data, click next arrow bottom right.
From Page 3, you can find the Regions in the dropdown list titled "REGION/AFFINITY GROUP/VIRTUAL NETWORK". Choose Brazil South (it is available for me).
David