How to Resolve the “VM Size Only Supports x64 Architecture” Error in ARM Template Deployment

When deploying Azure resources using an Azure DevOps pipeline with an ARM template, you may encounter the following error:

##[error]BadRequest: Cannot create a VM of size 'Standard_B2s' because this VM size only supports a CPU Architecture of 'x64', but an image or disk with CPU Architecture 'Arm64' was given. Please check that the CPU Architecture of the image or disk is compatible with that of the VM size.

This error arises due to a mismatch between the virtual machine (VM) size and the CPU architecture specified in the image or disk. In this particular case, the VM size (Standard_B2s) only supports x64 architecture, but the image being used has Arm64 architecture.

In this article, we’ll explain the cause of this error and how to resolve it by ensuring that the VM size and image architecture are compatible.

Understanding the Error

Azure offers virtual machine sizes based on different CPU architectures, such as:

• x64 architecture: Supports a wide range of general-purpose and compute-optimized workloads.
• Arm64 architecture: Designed for certain specialized workloads and hardware platforms, such as ARM processors.