Azure for Students: allowed regions policy restricts VM deployment and France Central has no available free VM SKU

Question

Azure for Students: allowed regions policy restricts VM deployment and France Central has no available free VM SKU

BRUNO CARDOSO RODRIGUES 0

Hello Azure Support Team,

I am using an Azure for Students subscription and I am trying to create a free Linux virtual machine for learning and development purposes.

My subscription has the Microsoft-managed policy "Allowed resource deployment regions" assigned. The policy parameter "Allowed locations" contains multiple permitted regions, including:

Belgium Central (belgiumcentral)
Spain Central (spaincentral)
France Central (francecentral)

However, when I create a virtual machine in the Azure portal, only France Central is available in the Region field. The other regions listed in the allowed locations policy do not appear as selectable options for Virtual Machines.

I attempted to create an Ubuntu Server 24.04 LTS x64 Gen2 virtual machine in France Central using the free eligible size Standard_B2ats_v2. The deployment fails during preflight validation with the following error:

Code: SkuNotAvailable

Message:

"The requested VM size for resource 'Following SKUs have failed for Capacity Restrictions: Standard_B2ats_v2' is currently not available in location 'FranceCentral'. Please try another size or deploy to a different location or zone."

Deployment tracking ID:

554e47a1-3190-4438-9eda-2b469bd27f9d

I also tried to review the regional restriction policy, but the assignment is system-managed and cannot be modified. Azure shows the following message:

"The policy assignment ID 'sys.regionrestriction' is invalid. A policy assignment ID must not start with 'sys.'."

Could you please help with the following:

Confirm the complete list of regions enabled for Virtual Machines in my Azure for Students subscription.
Explain why Belgium Central and Spain Central are listed as allowed locations in the policy but do not appear as available regions in the VM creation portal.
Confirm which Linux x64 VM SKUs are currently available for my subscription in France Central.
Advise whether Standard_B1s, Standard_B2ats_v2, or another free-tier eligible x64 VM size can be made available.
If France Central cannot currently provide capacity for a free Linux VM, please enable or advise an alternative permitted region where I can create the VM.

I have attached screenshots of:

The "Allowed resource deployment regions" policy assignment and allowed locations.
The Azure VM creation page showing France Central as the only available region.
The SkuNotAvailable deployment error.

Thank you for your assistance.

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1 answer

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Answer 1

@BRUNO CARDOSO RODRIGUES I hope you are doing well,

Welcome to Microsoft Q&A,

There are two separate issues here:

The sys.regionrestriction policy is Microsoft-managed for Azure for Students. The regions listed are permitted deployment locations, but this does not guarantee that every VM SKU is available in those regions.

The SkuNotAvailable error for Standard_B2ats_v2 in France Central indicates a current capacity restriction for that VM size, not a problem with your subscription quota.

You cannot modify the sys.regionrestriction assignment or manually make a VM SKU available in a region.

I recommend trying another eligible B-series size, such as Standard_B1s, if it is offered in the portal, or testing another permitted region such as Belgium Central or Spain Central.

Microsoft documents that VM quota and regional capacity are separate:

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