CODEWITHSUNDEEP
azure
user4951
user4951

Reputation: 33080

creating image windows azure without deleted virtual machine?

I have an instance medium in windows azure.

I need an image to make new instance large, so when I create an image, It say you must delete it as part of operation.

enter image description here

So, how can i make image instance medium without deleting current virtual machine??

note: Amazon cloud service can make image without deleting instance. That includes microsoft server.

Actually how to do create image with minimum downtime. That's the true purpose of this question.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 4516

Answers (3)

Mahesh Malpani
Mahesh Malpani

Reputation: 1989

There is VHD blob container which contains your VM OS disk and VM data disks. You can copy the data disks and attach to any VM.

When you are creating the image, you need to do sysprep which deletes everything from your VM even login. So anyways your VM is of no use. Now once the image is there you can create your VM selecting the image which you have created and data disk if you want old data to be there also. And you can create as many copies as you want.

Upvotes: 0

zjalex
zjalex

Reputation: 125

There are two types of images: Specialized and Generalized. You can check the detail in VM Image.

For your scenario, you want to change the size of your vm. So you'll need a Generalized image which has been removed the original provision data, such as vm size, the admin user password, etc.

But in order to capture a Generalized image, you have to do deprovision on the original running vm.

For Windows in Azure: %windir%\system32\sysprep\sysprep.exe /generalize /shutdown /oobe For Linux in Azure: $ sudo waagent –force –deprovision $ shutdown –h now

Note: After deprovison, the original VM is useless for you and just like an orphan, and you lost the control for it since it has been removed a lots of original provision data. That's why Azure deletes the vm automatically after capturing image successfully.

I agree with you AWS EC2 is more powershell than Azure. A lot of services are inconvenient in Azure.

Upvotes: 1

Rick Rainey
Rick Rainey

Reputation: 11246

There are a couple of objectives I read from this. The first is that you want to make a medium instance large. You can change the size of a virtual machine without deleting it. Go to the configure tab for the VM and change the size. This will require a reboot, but it will keep your virtual machine in tact.

The second is to create an image with minimum downtime. As you know, this is not possible without destroying your existing VM. The details of sysprepping a machine are the reason (won't go into those details here). You could create a new virtual machine from your existing one and sysprep that copy though. At least that way you're not losing any downtime while you're creating the image. Not sure how helpful that is for your scenario. Personally, I would just re-size your existing VM if that's all you need. Regardless, here are the steps.

  1. Copy the VHD to a backup container in the same storage account.
  2. Create a new disk from the copy of the VHD.
  3. Create a new virtual machine based off the new disk. You can also specify the size at this step too.
  4. Login and sysprep the new virtual machine.
  5. Shutdown and capture the image of the new virtual machine.

This will get you an image without impacting your existing VM.

Upvotes: 3

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