I have a VM and I want to be able to copy a large amount of files to a backup drive. I have remote desktop and tried to copy that way , but the copy halts and gives no error.
The size is about 120G of data ?
Copying files larger than 2 GB with RDP isn't supported. Check this article for details.
As an alternate option, you could try using the Azure Backup service if you intend to back up your Azure VM. Backups are stored in a Recovery Services vault with built-in management of recovery points. Configuration and scaling are simple, backups are optimized, and you can easily restore as needed.
As part of the backup process, a snapshot is taken, and the data is transferred to the Recovery Services vault with no impact on production workloads. You can also schedule your backups to a suitable time so that resources are optimally used.
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we have a azure windows vm which has couple of disks as part of azure storage attached to it.
As part of archiving the older data, want to copy the files to a local storage(on prem) and delete the files stored in those vhd's and thus reduce the size.
As you may already know , one way to do this is to physically copy the files from vm to local storage through a RDP session but this may be slow and may incur bandwidth usage cost.
I explored using azure storage explorer which uses azcopy in the background but i was able to see only vhd files. i tried to download or copy the vhd files but it fails after reaching 100%.
Please note that we're talking copying files of almost 500-800 GB to local storage.
Can someone please provide any suggestions regarding any better methods of copying these files.
I have worked with EXSi Servers lot of times.They provide snapshot option which can be used to revert back the same server to any point of snapshot that we taken.
I was unable to find the same in AWS and Azure.These cloud enterprises provide the option to backup the server.
AWS backups the whole volume.
Azure provide vault800 backup wizard which is incremental.
We can create a new Server with that backup, but we cannot revert back the same server.The EXSi Server take snapshot 10% of 100% volume of server and revert back as per our requirement.
For Azure, take a look at blob snapshots.
Azure Storage provides the capability to take snapshots of blobs. Snapshots capture the blob state at that point in time.
Pretty much the same story with AWS:
You can back up the data on your Amazon EBS volumes to Amazon S3 by taking point-in-time snapshots. Snapshots are incremental backups, which means that only the blocks on the device that have changed after your most recent snapshot are saved
how about using a 3rd party backup solution like Veeam or cloudberry to take image based backup copies and replicate them onto preferred cloud storage.
Veeam also supports instant VM recovery, you can immediately restore a VM into your production environment by running it directly from the backup file. Instant VM recovery helps improve recovery time objectives (RTO), minimise disruption and downtime of production VMs. It is like having a "temporary spare" for a VM: users remain productive while you can troubleshoot an issue with the failed VM.
I'm a lone dev that inherited a giant undocumented mess of an azure vm without any sysadmin-like training nor a lab to test things out. This vm runs our website just fine, but I couldn't log in to VestaCp because disk space usage is at 100%.
I did setup azure to make daily backups. Now I'm wondering if azure somehow stores them on the same machine e.g. they're the cause of the full disk space.
if so, how do I remove a set of old backups?
Now I'm wondering if azure somehow stores them on the same machine e.g. they're the cause of the full disk space.
As mentioned in the official document about creating a recovery services vault for a VM:
The location of Recovery Services vault determines the geographic region where your backup data is sent.
If you have virtual machines in multiple regions, create a Recovery Services vault in each region.
There is no need to specify the storage accounts used to store the backup data--the Recovery Services vault and the Azure Backup service automatically handle the storage.
Per my understanding, your VM backup data could be stored on the storage accounts that are managed automatically by the Recovery Services vault (ARM) and the Azure Backup service (ASM).
Moreover, if this issue could not be solved by removing a set of old backups, I assumed that you could follow this tutorial to resize Azure VM OS or Data Disk created using Azure Service Manager (ASM) or this tutorial for resizing ARM VM OS & Data disk.
Could someone please help me understand this? I created Virtual Machine in Azure running Windows Server 2012. I noticed Azure created a storage account automatically. When I go inside that storage account, click Containers tab, and under vhds name it shows a name-name2-2014-12-05.vhd which is 127 GB and it always has recent Last modified date. What is that for? Is that my live backup image of my entire server deployment? If so where can I see how often it backs up?
When I go inside that storage account, click Containers tab, and under
vhds name it shows a name-name2-2014-12-05.vhd which is 127 GB and it
always has recent Last modified date. What is that for?
Virtual Machines in Azure are Stateful in nature. What that means is that any changes you make to the Virtual Machines like installing software, creating files etc. are persisted. The way Azure achieves this is by storing the Virtual Machine VHD as a page blob in Azure Storage. What you see as name-name2-2014-12-05.vhd is the VHD using which Azure launches your VM.
Is that my live backup image of my entire server deployment?
It is your VM and not the backup image. If by mistake you delete it (though Azure makes it real hard for you to delete it but its possible), your VM is gone. If you want, you can take a backup of this and store it in some other place. Search for Create Azure Virtual Machine Images and you will find ample resources.
If so where can I see how often it backs up?
By default Azure keeps 2 extra copies (a total of 3 including the main) of it in the data center and if you have enabled geo-redundancy, then Azure keeps additional 3 copies in a separate datacenter. However please keep in mind that it is not a backup. Any changes you make to your VM are replicated to all the copies. You would need to come up with your backup approach.
My recommendation would be to read more about Azure Virtual Machines. I'm sure if you search for it, you will get plentiful of resources.
I currently have a Rackspace Cloud Server that I'd like to migrate to an Azure Virtual Machine. I recently got an MSDN subscription which gives me a certain level of hosting via Azure at no cost, where I'm currently paying for that level of service with Rackspace.
However, one of the nice things about Rackspace is that I can schedule nightly/weekly backups of the VM image. Is there any mechanism for doing this on Azure? I'm worried about protecting against corruption of the database (i.e. what if someone were to run an UPDATE statement and forget the WHERE clause). Is there a mechanism for this with Azure?
I know the VMs are stored as .VHD files in my local Azure storage, but the VM image is 127 gigs. Downloading that nightly even with FIOS internet isn't really going to fly as a solution.
You can perform an asynchronous blob copy to make a physical copy of a vhd. See here for REST API details. This operation is very fast within the same data center (maybe a few seconds?). You don't need to make raw REST calls though: There's a method already implemented in the Azure cross-platform command line interface, available here. The command is:
azure vm disk upload
You can also take blob snapshots, and return to a previous snapshot later. A snapshot is read-only (which you can copy from later) and takes up no space initially. However, as storage pages are changed, the snapshot grows.
One question though: why such a large VM image? Are you storing OS + data on same vhd? If so, it may make more sense to mount a separate Azure Drive (also stored in VHD in blob storage) to store data, and make independent copies / snapshots.