Azure Retirement Tracker: Affected Resources
Overview
The Spotto Service Retirement Tracker helps you track Azure retirement details (end-of-support / deprecation notices) that affect your subscriptions and the resources Spotto has mapped as affected.
Track more than just service retirements
- Azure service retirements, including feature and SKU retirements
- Virtual Machine size and SKU end-of-life
- Application (Service Principal) credential expiry
- Operating System and SQL version expiry
- Reserved Instances and Savings Plans retirement details
It’s designed to make “we should deal with that before it breaks” a normal weekly workflow, not an emergency calendar invite.
Feature overview
Retirement Tracker is a portal view that lists upcoming (and already-expired) Azure retirement notices, with fast triage signals like risk, effort, and confidence. Each retirement entry links you to the affected resources in your Spotto inventory so you can plan migrations, upgrades, and policy changes before support ends, whether the change is a service retirement, a VM size end-of-life, or a credential about to expire.
Where to find it: In the Spotto Portal sidebar, go to Monitor → Retirement Tracker.
Spotto associates retirement notices to resources using the best available metadata. It’s a fast way to find likely work, not a substitute for validating scope and deadlines in the linked Microsoft announcement.
Why use this? (Jobs, pains, gains)
Jobs to be done
- When Microsoft announces a retirement, I want to see what it affects in my environment, so I can plan remediation before the deadline.
- When I’m prioritising work, I want to rank retirements by urgency and effort, so the right teams pick up the right migrations first.
- When someone asks “are we on supported services?”, I want a single list I can export and share, so I don’t rebuild the same spreadsheet every month.
Common pains
- Retirement notices exist, but mapping them to your actual resources is time-consuming.
- Deadlines creep up, then suddenly it’s “why is this feature gone?” day.
- The person who sees the notice (FinOps/Security/Platform) isn’t always the person who owns the remediation work.
- Provider-native pages tell you what’s retiring, but not always what you should do next.
What you gain
- A subscription-scoped view that ties retirements to affected resources.
- Quick prioritisation using retirement date status, risk, and effort.
- A detail view that includes rationale (risk/effort/confidence) plus a link to the official Microsoft announcement.
- A CSV export for planning, change requests, and “please don’t schedule this migration during month-end close” conversations.
Key capabilities
Select subscriptions to scope the view
Use the subscription selector at the top of the page to choose one or more subscriptions. If no subscriptions are selected, the page shows an empty state until you pick at least one.
Triage at a glance
The summary cards show:
- Total retirements
- Upcoming retirements (next 30 days)
- Effort distribution (High / Medium / Low, when available)
In the table, retirement dates are displayed with a status (for example “Expired X days ago”, “Expires today”, or “N days left”) to make urgency obvious without mental math.
Retirement date status (how Spotto labels urgency)
- Expired: the retirement date has passed (shown as “Expired X days ago”).
- About to expire: due today, tomorrow, or within the next week (shown as “Expires today” / “N days left”).
- Near future: due within the next 30 days (still shown as “N days left”, and counted in “Upcoming (next 30 days)”).
- Later: due in months (shown as “N months away”; long-dated items may appear visually de-emphasised so the urgent ones don’t get buried).
Search, sort, and export
- Search across service name, retiring feature, date, effort, and affected resources.
- Sort by retirement date (default), risk, or effort.
- Export the current results to CSV (useful for backlog creation and reporting).
Drill into the details (and affected resources)
Click a row to open the detail view with:
- Retirement date, risk, effort (with hour estimates when available), and confidence
- Risk/effort/confidence rationale and key considerations
- A direct link to Microsoft’s retirement notice
- A list of affected resources that link to the corresponding Spotto resource detail pages
Workflow status and collaboration
Retirement Tracker supports the same triage workflow as recommendations:
- Active: Default status for items that still need review or action.
- Prioritized: Marked as high-priority work so it stays visible and easy to sort to the top.
- Dismissed: Hide items you’ve decided not to act on (for example, a Reserved Instance you won’t renew). Dismissals can be permanent or until a date. If a dismissal end date passes, the item automatically returns to Active and appears again. You can toggle “Show dismissed” to review these later.
Each retirement also supports:
- Comments to capture context and decisions.
- Pinned comment to highlight the most important note.
- History of actions (dismiss, restore, prioritize, unprioritize, pin/unpin, comment) with optional reasons.
Technical reference (what the Retirement Tracker uses)
| Component | Details |
|---|---|
| Inputs | Retirement notices for each selected subscription, plus Spotto’s resource inventory. Additional signals include VM size and SKU lifecycle data, Service Principal credential metadata, OS and SQL version signals, and Reserved Instances/Savings Plans retirement data (when tenant-level read access is granted). |
| Outputs | Summary cards, a searchable/sortable retirement table, a retirement detail view, and CSV export across service retirements, VM size/SKU end-of-life, credential expiry, OS/SQL expiry, and Reserved Instances/Savings Plans retirements. |
| Defaults | Sorts by retirement date. “Upcoming” means within the next 30 days. Duplicate retirement notices across subscriptions are de-duplicated and their affected resources are merged. |
How it differs from Azure-native retirement views
Azure Service Health and Azure Updates are the source of truth for retirement announcements, but they’re not always optimized for answering the operational question: “what do we need to change in our environment?”
Spotto’s Retirement Tracker focuses on:
- Surfacing retirements in the same place you already triage resources and recommendations.
- Connecting retirement notices to affected resources in your inventory.
- Providing structured triage hints (risk/effort/confidence) alongside the official announcement link.
How it works (high level)
- You select one or more subscriptions.
- Spotto fetches the retirement notices for those subscriptions and shows them in a single combined list.
- Retirements that appear across multiple subscriptions are de-duplicated; affected resources are merged into the same entry.
- The detail view includes supporting fields (risk/effort/confidence and considerations) when they’re available.
Coverage and limitations
- OS expiry and SQL version end-of-life signals do not cover every scenario (for example, custom images or some SQL support paths). Treat these as early indicators, not a full compliance audit.
- Retirement Tracker is a fast mapping layer over multiple data sources. Always validate scope and deadlines against the linked Microsoft announcement when available.
Permissions and access
To see Application (Service Principal) credential expiry, Reserved Instances, and Savings Plans retirement details, Spotto requires read access at the tenant level. Without tenant-level read access, those sections will be absent or incomplete.
Troubleshooting
The page is empty / I don’t see any retirements
What you’re seeing: No rows, or an empty state prompt. Likely causes:
- No subscriptions selected.
- The subscriptions aren’t fully synced/ready yet. How to fix:
- Select at least one subscription in the subscription picker.
- If the subscription is still onboarding, wait for ingestion to complete and refresh.
“No service retirements match your current filters.”
What you’re seeing: The table shows the message No service retirements match your current filters.
Likely causes:
- Your search term is too specific (or you’re filtering by a field that isn’t present for every retirement).
- You’ve selected subscriptions that currently have no matching retirement entries. How to fix:
- Clear the search box and try again.
- Select additional subscriptions (or use “Select all”) to broaden the scope.
Risk/Effort/Confidence shows “-” or looks incomplete
What you’re seeing: Some retirements have missing triage fields. Likely causes: Not every retirement notice has enough context to populate every field, or enrichment hasn’t run yet. How to fix: Use the Microsoft “Learn more” link in the detail view for the authoritative guidance, and treat missing fields as “unknown”, not “safe”.
Application credentials, Reserved Instances, or Savings Plans don’t show up
What you’re seeing: Those categories are missing from the table or detail view. Likely causes: Spotto doesn’t have tenant-level read access, or access was granted only at the subscription level. How to fix: Grant tenant-level read access to Spotto, then refresh the page after ingestion completes.
Resource links don’t open in a new tab
What you’re seeing: Clicking an affected resource doesn’t open the resource page. Likely causes: Browser pop-up blocking. How to fix: Allow pop-ups for the Spotto portal, or copy the resource link and open it manually.
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