When Microsoft schedules maintenance that may affect a virtual machine (VM), administrators have two options:

Wait for Azure to perform the maintenance automatically.

Move the VM to a new host proactively to minimize or avoid downtime.

According to the Microsoft Azure Administrator documentation, using the “Redeploy + reapply” option in the Azure portal forces the VM to migrate to a new Azure host within the same region and availability set.

Here’s what happens when you click Redeploy:

Azure shuts down the existing VM.

The VM is moved to a new physical host within the same region.

The operating system disk and data disks are retained, and network configuration (NICs, public IP, etc.) is preserved.

Once redeployed, Azure reassigns the VM to the same virtual network and reattaches disks and configurations.

This method is explicitly recommended by Microsoft to proactively address maintenance events or host-related issues like “unresponsive VM” or “performance degradation.”

Therefore, using the Redeploy operation from the “Redeploy + reapply” blade effectively achieves the goal of moving the VM to a different host immediately.