Azure VM Linux Ubuntu backup agent – Deployment failed

We have two Ubuntu (14.04) Linux server VMs on Azure hosting. Currently trying to setup the backup service within Azure for these machines. I have followed this guide and have the agent up and running. When running “waagent -version” in bash output shows:

WALinuxAgent-2.2.5 running on ubuntu 14.04
Python: 2.7.6
Goal state agent: 2.2.5

When then attempting to enable the backup service in Azure I get the error, deployment failed, here is a snippet of the error:

{
  "status": "Failed",
  "error": {
    "code": "ResourceDeploymentFailure",
    "message": "The resource operation completed with terminal provisioning state 'Failed'.",
    "details": [
      {
        "code": "UserErrorGuestAgentStatusUnavailable",
        "message": "Unable to perform the operation as the VM Agent is not responsive."

Unsure why the Agent is “not responsive” as it is installed and running.

What am I missing?

We have rebooted and restarted the server/services. Tried different backup job creations. Servers do have a load balancing set between them, but have tried disabling this to no effect.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

Answer

Microsoft support advised me to run these commands using the Azure powershell cmdlets:

Add-Azureaccount
$vm = Get-AzureVM –ServiceName <cloud service name> –Name <VM name>
$vm.VM.ProvisionGuestAgent = $true
Update-AzureVM –Name <VM name> –VM $vm.VM –ServiceName <cloud service name>

This did the trick! Have now been able to successfully backup the VM. This was with the walinuxagent installed from apt-get, nothing else was required in order for the service to run.