Common Anti-Patterns¶

Use this page as a review-board shortcut. If one of these patterns appears, stop and reopen the design before scaling it out.

This page's baseline at a glance — the recommended practices and the validation gate:

flowchart TD
    T["Common Anti-Patterns"]
    P1["Reject these patterns early"]
    T --> P1
    P2["Use the topic pages as remediation paths"]
    T --> P2
    V["Validation Checklist"]
    P1 --> V
    P2 --> V

Why This Matters¶

Most repeated Azure VM incidents are not new platform failures. They are familiar shortcuts that were accepted as temporary and quietly became the operating model.

Recommended Practices¶

Reject these patterns early¶

Anti-pattern	Why it keeps recurring	Better direction
Public SSH or RDP as the default	Fast for setup, expensive for security and incident handling	Use private administration and JIT where needed
Sizing by average CPU only	Easy to measure, weak predictor of real bottlenecks	Review memory, storage, and network together
Premium disk upgrade as the first storage fix	Looks decisive, often misses the VM cap or caching issue	Validate the full storage path first
Auto patching without image or reboot review	Sounds “managed,” but can still misfit the workload	Match patching mode to image and maintenance design
Backup policy without restore proof	Green dashboards feel reassuring	Run restore drills and document evidence
Commit discounts before design stabilizes	Creates visible savings quickly	Rightsize first, then commit

Use the topic pages as remediation paths¶

For exposed management paths, open Security Best Practices.
For weak sizing logic, open Sizing and Image Selection.
For storage bottlenecks, open Disk and Storage Best Practices.
For unproven recovery, open Backup and DR Best Practices.

Common Mistakes / Anti-Patterns¶

Anti-Pattern 1: Accepting “temporary” public access without an expiry¶

Temporary exceptions become permanent architecture surprisingly often.

Anti-Pattern 2: Solving symptoms in isolation¶

Changing only the VM size, only the disk tier, or only the NSG often leaves the real design issue untouched.

Anti-Pattern 3: Confusing compliant settings with proven operations¶

Configured monitoring, backup, or patching is weaker evidence than tested monitoring, restore, and maintenance workflows.

Validation Checklist¶

[ ] Reviewers can identify which anti-patterns are present before approving go-live.
[ ] Each detected anti-pattern maps to a topic-specific remediation page.
[ ] Exceptions have a named owner and expiry.
[ ] Evidence exists for restore, monitoring, and maintenance workflows.