Trying to create a host pool, but the locations listed for it exclude the ones I can use?

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Trying to create a host pool, but the locations listed for it exclude the ones I can use?

Lincoln Rickwood 20

I'm currently allowed to use these locations: "polandcentral", "spaincentral", "germanywestcentral", "swedencentral", "switzerlandnorth". These are available to select when creating virtual machines and other resources. When I attempt to create a host pool, however, none of the allowed locations is present in the list of locations in which the host pool can be located. Hence, I cannot create the host pool.

How do I get the list of locations available to the host pool to include one or more of the allowed locations?

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TP 163.6K Volunteer Moderator

Hi Lincoln,

I assume you are referring to Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) host pool. Please correct me if my assumption is wrong.

Unfortunately Azure for Students is restricted to small number of regions (typically five, as in your case) for capacity reasons and is blocked from making Quota requests. Additionally, if a service (such as AVD) is only available in certain regions and none of those overlap with your allowed Azure for Students regions, you cannot create the resource.

One option to allow you to use different/more regions would be to create separate Pay-As-You-Go subscription and only use that when you need to deploy a resource that you cannot deploy to one of your five allowed regions in your Azure for Students. If you do this you need to verify pricing before creating any resources and make sure to delete resources immediately after you are finished using them.

Please click Accept Answer and upvote if the above was helpful.

Thanks.

-TP

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Answer 1

Hi @Lincoln Rickwood ,

Thank you for reaching out on the Microsoft Q&A portal!

The reason you cannot find your allowed regions in the host pool location list is because the location selected during the creation of an Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) host pool dictates where the service metadata is stored, not where your session host Virtual Machines (compute) will run.

As stated in the official Microsoft documentation for Data locations for Azure Virtual Desktop:

"When Azure Virtual Desktop resources are deployed, you have to specify the Azure region they'll be created in. The location of the resource determines where its information will be stored... Customer input data is stored in the geography associated with the Azure region the resource is created in."

Currently, AVD metadata storage is only supported in specific geographies (such as the US, Europe [West Europe, North Europe], UK, Canada, Japan, Australia, and India). The regions you are allowed to use (polandcentral, spaincentral, germanywestcentral, swedencentral, switzerlandnorth) do not support AVD metadata databases, which is why they do not appear in the Host Pool location dropdown.

How to resolve this: Based on the specific five regions you mentioned, it appears you are using an Azure for Students subscription. This subscription type imposes strict region restrictions for capacity reasons. Because AVD host pools require a metadata region, and none of your allowed student regions support it, you are blocked from creating the resource directly on this subscription.

To work around this:

Use a Pay-As-You-Go Subscription: You will need to provision the Host Pool (metadata) in a standard Pay-As-You-Go subscription where you can select a supported metadata region like West Europe.
Deploy VMs in Allowed Regions: Once the host pool is created, you can still deploy your actual Session Host Virtual Machines in your preferred region (e.g., swedencentral or polandcentral), as the compute layer operates independently of the metadata layer.

If you decide to use a Pay-As-You-Go subscription, please monitor your usage closely and delete resources when you are done to avoid unexpected charges.

Please click Accept Answer and upvote if this helps clarify your issue!