Switch Virtual Console

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The Serial Console in the Azure portal provides access to a text-based console for Windows virtual machines (VMs) and virtual machine scale set instances. This serial connection connects to the COM1 serial port of the VM or virtual machine scale set instance, providing access to it independent of the network or operating system state. The serial console can only be accessed by using the Azure portal and is allowed only for those users who have an access role of Contributor or higher to the VM or virtual machine scale set.

Serial Console works in the same manner for VMs and virtual machine scale set instances. In this doc, all mentions to VMs will implicitly include virtual machine scale set instances unless otherwise stated.

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Serial Console is generally available in global Azure regions and in public preview in Azure Government. It is not yet available in the Azure China cloud.

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For serial console documentation for Linux, see Azure Serial Console for Linux.

Note

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Serial Console is currently incompatible with a managed boot diagnostics storage account. To use Serial Console, ensure that you are using a custom storage account.

Prerequisites

  • Your VM or virtual machine scale set instance must use the resource management deployment model. Classic deployments aren't supported.

  • Your account that uses serial console must have the Virtual Machine Contributor role for the VM and the boot diagnostics storage account

  • Your VM or virtual machine scale set instance must have a password-based user. You can create one with the reset password function of the VM access extension. Select Reset password from the Support + troubleshooting section.

  • The VM for virtual machine scale set instance must have boot diagnostics enabled.

Enable Serial Console functionality for Windows Server

Note

If you are not seeing anything in the serial console, make sure that boot diagnostics is enabled on your VM or virtual machine scale set.

Enable the serial console in custom or older images

Newer Windows Server images on Azure have Special Administration Console (SAC) enabled by default. SAC is supported on server versions of Windows but isn't available on client versions (for example, Windows 10, Windows 8, or Windows 7).

For older Windows Server images (created before February 2018), you can automatically enable the serial console through the Azure portal's run command feature. In the Azure portal, select Run command, then select the command named EnableEMS from the list.

Alternatively, to manually enable the serial console for Windows VMs/virtual machine scale set created before February 2018, follow these steps:

  1. Connect to your Windows virtual machine by using Remote Desktop

  2. From an administrative command prompt, run the following commands:

    • bcdedit /ems {current} on, or bcdedit /ems '{current}' on if you are using PowerShell
    • bcdedit /emssettings EMSPORT:1 EMSBAUDRATE:115200

  3. Reboot the system for the SAC console to be enabled.

If needed, the SAC can be enabled offline as well:

  1. Attach the windows disk for which you want SAC configured as a data disk to the existing VM.

  2. From an administrative command prompt, run the following commands:

    • bcdedit /store <mountedvolume>bootbcd /ems {default} on
    • bcdedit /store <mountedvolume>bootbcd /emssettings EMSPORT:1 EMSBAUDRATE:115200

How do I know if SAC is enabled?

If SAC isn't enabled, the serial console won't display the SAC prompt. In some cases, VM health information is shown, and in other cases it's blank. If you're using a Windows Server image created before February 2018, SAC probably won't be enabled.

Enable the Windows boot menu in the serial console

If you need to enable Windows boot loader prompts to display in the serial console, you can add the following additional options to your boot configuration data. For more information, see bcdedit.

  1. Connect to your Windows VM or virtual machine scale set instance by using Remote Desktop.

  2. From an administrative command prompt, run the following commands:

    • bcdedit /set {bootmgr} displaybootmenu yes
    • bcdedit /set {bootmgr} timeout 10
    • bcdedit /set {bootmgr} bootems yes

  3. Reboot the system for the boot menu to be enabled

Note

The timeout that you set for the boot manager menu to display will impact your OS boot time. If you think the 10-second timeout value is too short or too long, set it to a different value.

Use Serial Console

Use CMD or PowerShell in Serial Console

  1. Connect to the serial console. If you successfully connect, the prompt is SAC>:

  2. Enter cmd to create a channel that has a CMD instance.

  3. Enter ch -si 1 or press the <esc>+<tab> shortcut keys to switch to the channel that's running the CMD instance.

  4. Press Enter, and then enter sign-in credentials with administrative permissions.

  5. After you've entered valid credentials, the CMD instance opens.

  6. To start a PowerShell instance, enter PowerShell in the CMD instance, and then press Enter.

Use the serial console for NMI calls

A non-maskable interrupt (NMI) is designed to create a signal that software on a virtual machine won't ignore. Historically, NMIs have been used to monitor for hardware issues on systems that required specific response times. Today, programmers and system administrators often use NMI as a mechanism to debug or troubleshoot systems that are not responding.

The serial console can be used to send an NMI to an Azure virtual machine by using the keyboard icon in the command bar. After the NMI is delivered, the virtual machine configuration will control how the system responds. Windows can be configured to crash and create a memory dump file when receiving an NMI.


For information on configuring Windows to create a crash dump file when it receives an NMI, see How to generate a crash dump file by using an NMI.

Use function keys in serial console

Function keys are enabled for usage for serial console in Windows VMs. The F8 in the serial console dropdown provides the convenience of easily entering the Advanced Boot Settings menu, but serial console is compatible with all other function keys. You may need to press Fn + F1 (or F2, F3, etc.) on your keyboard depending on the computer you are using serial console from.

Use WSL in serial console

The Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) has been enabled for Windows Server 2019 or later, so it is also possible to enable WSL for use within the serial console if you are running Windows Server 2019 or later. This may be beneficial for users that also have a familiarity with Linux commands. For instructions to enable WSL for Windows Server, see the Installation guide.

Restart your Windows VM/virtual machine scale set instance within Serial Console

You can initiate a restart within the serial console by navigating to the power button and clicking 'Restart VM'. This will initiate a VM restart, and you will see a notification within the Azure portal regarding the restart.

Wii U Virtual Console

This is useful in situations where you may want to access the boot menu without leaving the serial console experience.

Disable the Serial Console

By default, all subscriptions have serial console access enabled. You can disable the serial console at either the subscription level or VM/virtual machine scale set level. For detailed instructions, visit Enable and disable the Azure Serial Console.

Serial console security

Access security

Access to the serial console is limited to users who have an access role of Virtual Machine Contributor or higher to the virtual machine. If your Azure Active Directory tenant requires multi-factor authentication (MFA), then access to the serial console will also need MFA because the serial console's access is through the Azure portal.

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Channel security

All data that is sent back and forth is encrypted on the wire.

Audit logs

All access to the serial console is currently logged in the boot diagnostics logs of the virtual machine. Access to these logs are owned and controlled by the Azure virtual machine administrator.

Console

Caution

No access passwords for the console are logged. However, if commands run within the console contain or output passwords, secrets, user names, or any other form of personally identifiable information (PII), those will be written to the VM boot diagnostics logs. They will be written along with all other visible text, as part of the implementation of the serial console's scroll back function. These logs are circular and only individuals with read permissions to the diagnostics storage account have access to them. However, we recommend following the best practice of using the Remote Desktop for anything that may involve secrets and/or PII.

Concurrent usage

If a user is connected to the serial console and another user successfully requests access to that same virtual machine, the first user will be disconnected and the second user connected to the same session.

Caution

This means that a user who's disconnected won't be logged out. The ability to enforce a logout upon disconnect (by using SIGHUP or similar mechanism) is still in the roadmap. For Windows, there's an automatic timeout enabled in SAC; for Linux, you can configure the terminal timeout setting.

Accessibility

Accessibility is a key focus for the Azure serial console. To that end, we've ensured that the serial console is accessible for the people with vision impairment, or who are hard of hearing, as well as people who might not be able to use a mouse.

Keyboard navigation

Use the Tab key on your keyboard to navigate in the serial console interface from the Azure portal. Your location will be highlighted on screen. To leave the focus of the serial console window, press Ctrl+F6 on your keyboard.

Use the serial console with a screen reader

The serial console has screen reader support built in. Navigating around with a screen reader turned on will allow the alt text for the currently selected button to be read aloud by the screen reader.

Common scenarios for accessing the serial console

ScenarioActions in the serial console
Incorrect firewall rulesAccess serial console and fix Windows firewall rules.
Filesystem corruption/checkAccess the serial console and recover the filesystem.
RDP configuration issuesAccess the serial console and change the settings. For more information, see the RDP documentation.
Network lock down systemAccess the serial console from the Azure portal to manage the system. Some network commands are listed in Windows commands: CMD and PowerShell.
Interacting with bootloaderAccess BCD through the serial console. For information, see Enable the Windows boot menu in the serial console.

Known issues

We're aware of some issues with the serial console and the VM's operating system. Here's a list of these issues and steps for mitigation for Windows VMs. These issues and mitigations apply for both VMs and virtual machine scale set instances. If these don't match the error you're seeing, see the common serial console service errors at Common Serial Console errors.

IssueMitigation
Pressing Enter after the connection banner does not cause a sign-in prompt to be displayed.For more information, see Hitting enter does nothing. This error can occur if you're running a custom VM, hardened appliance, or boot config that causes Windows to fail to properly connect to the serial port. This error will also occur if you're running a Windows 10 VM, because only Windows Server VMs are configured to have EMS enabled.
Only health information is shown when connecting to a Windows VMThis error occurs if the Special Administration Console has not been enabled for your Windows image. See Enable the serial console in custom or older images for instructions on how to manually enable SAC on your Windows VM. For more information, see Windows health signals.
SAC does not take up the entire Serial Console area in the browserThis is a known issue with Windows and the terminal emulator. We are tracking this issue with both teams but for now there is no mitigation.
Unable to type at SAC prompt if kernel debugging is enabled.RDP to VM and run bcdedit /debug {current} off from an elevated command prompt. If you can't RDP, you can instead attach the OS disk to another Azure VM and modify it while attached as a data disk by running bcdedit /store <drive letter of data disk>:bootbcd /debug <identifier> off, then swapping the disk back.
Pasting into PowerShell in SAC results in a third character if the original content had a repeating character.For a workaround, run Remove-Module PSReadLine to unload the PSReadLine module from the current session. This action will not delete or uninstall the module.
Some keyboard inputs produce strange SAC output (for example, [A, [3~).VT100 escape sequences aren't supported by the SAC prompt.
Pasting long strings doesn't work.The serial console limits the length of strings pasted into the terminal to 2048 characters to prevent overloading the serial port bandwidth.

Frequently asked questions

Q. How can I send feedback?

A. Provide feedback by creating a GitHub issue at https://aka.ms/serialconsolefeedback. Alternatively (less preferred), you can send feedback via azserialhelp@microsoft.com or in the virtual machine category of https://feedback.azure.com.

Q. Does the serial console support copy/paste?

A. Yes. Use Ctrl+Shift+C and Ctrl+Shift+V to copy and paste into the terminal.

Q. Who can enable or disable the serial console for my subscription?

A. To enable or disable the serial console at a subscription-wide level, you must have write permissions to the subscription. Roles that have write permission include administrator or owner roles. Custom roles can also have write permissions.

Q. Who can access the serial console for my VM?

A. You must have the Virtual Machine Contributor role or higher for a VM to access the VM's serial console.

Q. My serial console isn't displaying anything, what do I do?

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A. Your image is likely misconfigured for serial console access. For information about configuring your image to enable the serial console, see Enable the serial console in custom or older images.

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Q. Is the serial console available for virtual machine scale sets?

A. Yes, it is! See Serial Console for Virtual Machine Scale Sets

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Next steps

Switch Virtual Console Release Date

  • For an in-depth guide to CMD and PowerShell commands you can use in the Windows SAC, see Windows commands: CMD and PowerShell.
  • The serial console is also available for Linux VMs.
  • Learn more about boot diagnostics.