Azure quota errors: request a raise before you need it, and know which quota

Error text patterns: Operation could not be completed as it results in exceeding approved ... quota, SubscriptionIsOverQuotaForSku, QuotaExceeded.

Triage:

1. Which quota, where. The message names the resource type and region. az vm list-usage -l [region] shows current vs limit for compute. Many "quota" errors are per-region, and another region has headroom.
2. Wrong subscription. Quotas are per subscription per region. A fresh sub has tiny defaults. If you have quota elsewhere, move the workload or the subscription, do not wait for a raise.
3. Request the increase. Azure portal: Subscriptions > Usage + quotas > Request increase. Or az support tickets create. Standard vCPU raises are usually approved in hours; GPU and some SKUs take days. Request 2-3x what you need now.
4. Burstable vs regular. B-series has its own quota pool. "Quota exceeded" on a B VM while D-series has room is a B-quota problem.
5. Cleanup first. Disassociated public IPs, unattached disks, and stopped (not deallocated) VMs all count against quota. az vm deallocate actually frees the vCPU quota; az vm stop does not.

Prevention: a pre-flight quota check in provisioning scripts (az vm list-usage) with a clear error beats a failed 20-minute deployment. For event-driven scale (Functions premium, AKS node pools), set the max burst below your quota so scale-out degrades gracefully instead of erroring.

Proactive error-catalog skill. Quota request flow verified against current Azure quota docs. Evidence: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/quotas/regional-quota-requests