Windows Admin Center in the Azure portal - 8 Caveats

This blog is a part of the Windows Admin Center in the Azure portal series. You can find the Index of this series here: Windows Admin Center in the Azure portal.

In the previous posts, we looked at different aspects of the Windows Admin Center from setting it up, to configuring it, and using various tools in it. In this post, we will look at various caveats and know limitations of this product.

1. Usage with Virtual Appliances

Inbound connectivity being redirected by another service (i.e. Network Virtual Appliances, Azure Firewall, etc.) is not supported. You must have inbound connectivity from the Azure portal to one of the direct IP addresses of your VM on the port Windows Admin Center is installed.

Network Virtual Appliance could be a third-party firewall like Palo Alto, Check Point, etc. Azure Firewall, a cloud-native network security service, is another solution that can exist between the communication. If via User Defined Routes (within Route Tables) or any other way the communication is not direct then the Windows Admin Center will not work. Hopefully, this restriction will be removed in near future.

2. Extending Windows Admin Center to Other VMs

Microsoft doesn't support extensions to Windows Admin Center in the Azure portal at the time of writing this post. If you manually installed Windows Admin Center in the VM to manage multiple systems, installing this VM extension reduces the functionality to managing just the VM in which the extension is installed. You will need to uninstall the extension to get back the functionality of managing multiple VMs at once.

3. Usage with Non-public cloud

Windows Admin Center is currently supported only on the Azure public cloud. It is not supported in Azure China, Azure Government, or other non-public clouds.

4. Supported Browsers/Apps

Windows Admin Center is currently supported only on the Microsoft Edge or Chrome browsers. Chrome Incognito mode isn't supported for now. Also, the Azure portal desktop app is not supported.

Reference: Use Windows Admin Center in the Azure portal to manage a Windows Server VM