Policy Action to start an Azure VM fails with error "CHT:BadHttpResponse:503"

Products

• CloudHealth

Issue/Introduction

Below are the steps that lead to this situation:

• You have a Policy with an Action that starts or stops an Azure VM or other Azure resource
• The Action fails occasionally/rarely
• Failed Actions (Error message seen) 
  Unable to start virtual machine <vm name> CHT:BadHttpResponse:503 subscription <subscription name>
  (where <vm name> is the name of the virtual machine and <subscription name> is the name of the subscription the vm belongs to).

Resolution

The CloudHealth Policy platform utilizes the Microsoft Azure REST API to start and stop VM's.  The response from this call is parsed and the HTTP error code is returned upon failure.  In this case, the Azure server is reporting HTTP error 503, Server Unavailable.  This is an error from Azure and is not a fault in the Action.  Please review the Activity logs on your Microsoft Azure console for detailed information.  Contact Azure technical support as needed.