How to Raise a Support Ticket in Azure Portal

How to Create a Support Request in Microsoft Azure Portal

A Complete DevOps Visual Guide: Support Plans, Issue Classification, Diagnostic Attachments & Severity SLAs

⏱️ 13 Min Read 🏷️ Azure Help + Support & Ticketing ⚡ Level: All Cloud Engineers

Managing cloud infrastructure on Microsoft Azure requires being prepared when services experience unexpected failures, network latency, resource quota limits, or unexpected billing spikes. Microsoft provides an integrated Help + Support center directly in the Azure Portal.

In this guide, you will learn how to open technical, billing, and subscription support tickets, leverage the built-in diagnostic tools, set proper severity levels, and work with Microsoft Support Engineers to get quick resolutions.

🎯 What You Will Learn

Comparing Azure Support Plans (Basic, Developer, Standard, and Professional Direct).
Navigating the Help + support blade in the Azure Portal.
Stepping through the 4-stage New Support Request Wizard.
Choosing between Severity A, B, and C and understanding response SLAs.
Attaching activity logs, boot diagnostics, and network captures for rapid root-cause analysis.

1. Overview of Azure Support Plans

Every Azure subscription includes Basic Support at no additional cost. For technical break-fix assistance on production resources, paid support tiers provide defined response time SLAs:

Support Plan	Target Audience	Severity A (Critical) SLA	Support Channels
Basic (Free)	Billing, Subscription Management & Quotas	N/A (No Tech Support)	Azure Portal (Billing only)
Developer	Non-production trials & dev testing	N/A (Sev C only: < 8 business hrs)	Email (Business hours)
Standard	Production enterprise workloads	< 1 hour (24/7)	24/7 Email & Phone
Professional Direct	Business-critical production systems	< 1 hour (24/7 with pool of experts)	24/7 Phone, Email & Advisory

💡 Pro-Tip for Free Accounts: If you are on the Azure Free or Pay-As-You-Go plan without a paid support subscription, you can still open Unlimited Free Tickets for:

Billing & Invoicing: Cost queries, unexpected charges, payment failures.
Subscription Management: Access recovery, transferring subscriptions.
Service Limits (Quotas): Requesting more vCPUs (e.g., Dv5 quota increases in a region).

2. Step-by-Step: Raising a Support Ticket in Azure Portal

1 Open Help + Support Blade

Sign in to the Azure Portal (portal.azure.com).
In the top global search bar, type Help + support and select it.
On the overview dashboard, check the Service Health widget for any ongoing regional outages.
Click the blue + Create a support request button.

Azure Help and Support Blade in Azure Portal

Figure 1: Azure Portal — Navigating to Help + Support and clicking '+ Create a support request'.

2 Step 1: Problem Description

Fill out the foundational classification fields:

Issue type: Select from Technical, Billing, Service and subscription limits (quotas), or Subscription management.
Subscription: Select the affected Azure Subscription (e.g., Production-Enterprise-Sub).
Service: Pick the exact Azure service (e.g., Virtual Machine running Linux, Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), Azure SQL Database).
Resource: Choose the specific resource (e.g., vm-prod-api-01).
Problem type & Problem subtype: Select the matching category (e.g., Cannot connect to VM (SSH/RDP) > SSH connection timeout).
Click Next to view recommended automated troubleshooting solutions.

Azure New Support Request Wizard Step 1 Problem Description

Figure 2: New Support Request — Specifying Issue Type, Subscription, Service, Resource, and Problem Subtype.

3 Step 2 & 3: Review Solutions & Configure Additional Details

Recommended Solutions: Azure's automated engine will run instant self-diagnostics on the selected resource. If the automated checks do not fix the problem, proceed to Additional details.
Severity Level: Select the appropriate business impact:
- Severity A — Critical business impact (Production service down).
- Severity B — Moderate impact (Service impaired, workarounds available).
- Severity C — Minimal impact (Non-critical feature issue, inquiries).
File Upload / Diagnostic Logs: Drag and drop serial logs, screenshots, crash dumps, or network traceroutes.
Contact Information: Choose your preferred contact method (Email or Phone callback) and verify your timezone.
Click Review + create and confirm ticket creation.

Azure Support Request Additional Details and Contact Information

Figure 3: Configuring Severity level, uploading diagnostic logs, and confirming contact preferences.

3. Raising Support Tickets via Azure CLI

DevOps automation engineers can also inspect and create support tickets programmatically using the Azure CLI Support Extension:

# 1. Install Azure support extension

az extension add --name support


# 2. List available support service problem classifications

az support services list --output table


# 3. Create a technical support ticket

az support tickets create \

  --ticket-name "vm-connectivity-ticket-01" \

  --title "Cannot connect to Linux VM vm-prod-api-01 via SSH" \

  --description "SSH port 22 timing out following kernel update on 2026-08-22 08:30 UTC" \

  --problem-classification "/providers/Microsoft.Support/services/.../problemClassifications/..." \

  --severity "moderate" \

  --contact-first-name "DevOps" \

  --contact-last-name "Engineer" \

  --contact-method "email" \

  --contact-email "devops@mycompany.com"

4. Best Practices for 1st-Contact Resolution

🚀 Checklist Before Submitting an Azure Ticket

Check Azure Resource Health: Go to the resource in Azure Portal > click Resource Health on the left menu to verify if Azure platform hardware maintenance is underway.
Provide Resource ID: Include the complete Azure Resource ID (found in Resource JSON View), e.g.:
/subscriptions/xxxx-xxxx/resourceGroups/Production-RG/providers/Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachines/vm-prod-api-01
Attach Boot Diagnostics & Serial Log: Under VM settings > Help > Serial console, copy boot traces.
Include Network Security Group (NSG) Effective Rules: Provide effective security rules or Network Watcher IP Flow Verify output.

5. Summary

Knowing how to effectively raise and manage Azure support tickets ensures your organization minimizes downtime when facing complex cloud infrastructure challenges. Proper classification, accurate severity setting, and upfront diagnostic logs give Microsoft engineers everything they need to resolve your ticket quickly.