What does 'the current update to this deployment has been preempted' error mean in Windows Azure?

Question

When scaling up a Windows Azure hosted service's instance count I occasionally get the following error when using the WAPP powershell cmdlets:

Get-OperationStatus : Failed: The current update to this deployment has been
preempted.At
D:\TFS\12\Deploy-Api\Sources\CloudServices\BuildProcessTemplates\DeploymentScripts\ChangeAllRolesInstanceCount.ps1:64 char:120
+ $deployment | Set-DeploymentConfiguration {$deployment.RolesConfiguration}
-ErrorVariable +err | Get-OperationStatus << -WaitToComplete -ErrorVariable +err;
+ CategoryInfo : CloseError: (:) [Get-OperationStatus], Exception
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId :
Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Samples.ManagementTools.PowerShell.Services.Common.GetOperationStatusCommand

I am scaling up by changing the instance count in the config, and then calling Set-DeploymentConfiguration with the new values.

Answer 1

We didn't find out what the error meant. The solution we came up with was to stop waiting for the operation to complete via the -WaitToComplete flag and instead poll the status of the deployment using the Get-OperationStatus until all the response said the operation was done.