Migrate from deprecated VM insights policies

We're deprecating the VM insights DCR deployment policies and replacing them with new policies because of a race condition issue. The deprecated policies will continue to work on existing assignments, but will no longer be available for new assignments. If you're using deprecated policies, we recommend you migrate to the new policies as soon as possible.

This article explains how to migrate from deprecated VM insights policies to their replacement policies.

Prerequisites

• An existing user-assigned managed identity.

Deprecated VM insights policies

These policies are deprecated and will be removed in 2026. We recommend you migrate to the replacement policies as soon as possible:

• [Preview]: Deploy a VMInsights Data Collection Rule and Data Collection Rule Association for Arc Machines in the Resource Group
• [Preview]: Deploy a VMInsights Data Collection Rule and Data Collection Rule Association for all the VMs in the Resource Group
• [Preview]: Deploy a VMInsights Data Collection Rule and Data Collection Rule Association for all the virtual machine scale sets in the Resource Group

New VM insights policies

These policies replace the deprecated policies:

• Configure Linux Machines to be associated with a Data Collection Rule or a Data Collection Endpoint
• Configure Windows Machines to be associated with a Data Collection Rule or a Data Collection Endpoint

Migrate from deprecated VM insights policies to replacement policies

1. Download the Azure Monitor Agent-based VM insights data collection rule templates.

2. Deploy the VM insights data collection rule using an ARM template, as described in Quickstart: Create and deploy ARM templates by using the Azure portal.

   1. Select Build your own template in the editor > Load file to upload the template you downloaded in the previous step.

      • To collect only VM insights performance metrics, deploy the ama-vmi-default-perf-dcr data collection rule by uploading the DeployDcr>PerfOnlyDcr>DeployDcrTemplate file.
      • To collect VM insights performance metrics and Service Map data, deploy the ama-vmi-default-perfAndda-dcr data collection rule by uploading the DeployDcr>PerfAndMapDcr>DeployDcrTemplate file.

   2. When the data collection rule deployment is complete, select Go to resource > JSON View and copy the data collection rule's Resource ID.

3. Select one of the new VM insights policies for Windows and Linux VMs.

4. Select Assign.

5. In the Scope field on the Basics tab, select your subscription and the resource group that contains the VMs you want to monitor.

6. In the Data Collection Rule Resource Id field on the Parameters tab, paste the resource ID of the data collection rule you created in the previous step.

7. On the Remediation tab:

   1. In the Scope field, select your subscription and the resource group that contains your user-assigned managed identity.
   2. Set Type of managed identity to User Assigned Managed Identity and select your user-assigned identity.

Next steps

Learn how to:

• View VM insights Map to see application dependencies.
• View Azure VM performance to identify bottlenecks and overall utilization of your VM's performance.