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azureazure-virtual-machine

Best way to archive an Azure VM?

I want to archive a Azure VM. It's currently deallocated, so we're not incurring compute charges, but we're still paying for the storage, even if it's not online. We want to move the storage to BLOB storage since it's cheaper, as we don't want to lose the data, but don't want to pay a premium to have it sit idle, either.

I tried to create an image, which then deleted the VM instance, but left the disks in-tact without a reference to them.

What's the best way to archive a VM?

Solution

  • If your Disk is managed, you can take following steps. Now, Azure can let you change your Managed Disk type easily.

    Steps:Go to Azure Portal> Stop (deallocate) your VM> Go to Your Disk> Account type > Choose standard (HDD)> Click Save

    Then your disk will be successfully updated!

    enter image description here

    After deleting the VM, you can also use the disk to create VM from the disk. Also, you can generate a URI for the disk to copy it to another storage account or export it. enter image description here If your Disk is unmanaged, you cannot convert the disk from Premium to standard directly. You need to create a new storage account (or use an existing storage account) and copy the blobs holding the disks from Premium account to Standard account. The best way is that you can use Azcopy to do this.