How to create a azure VM with smaller OS disk - azure

So I am running a small VM for personal stuff on azure and want to minimize cost. The disk cost is significant part of my per day spending. I am running standard Ubuntu 18.04 image and already selected standard HDD instead of SSD for disk. but the current OS disk is of size 30GB and I am hardly using 3GB of it. I want to use smaller disk but I can't find a option to do so.

For your issue, I'm afraid it's impossible. The reason is that when you gonna create a VM from the VM image, the OS disk size must be bigger than the image size. I think you know the limitation. And in Azure, it also makes sense. For example, you can see the details of the VM image Ubuntu 18.04-LTS:
You see the VM image size is 31, so the VM OS disk size should bigger than 31. When you want to create the VM, you can see the details about the VM image first, and then you will know if what is the minimum size of the OS disk.

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Azure will not let me swap to my new smaller OS disk

Good Morning, Fellow Stack Overflow-ers,
I have a Windows 2019 DC Virtual Machine with a 127GiB OS Disk with MS Azure. The WM image is Standard B2s (2 vcpus, 4 GiB memory)
I want to swap this with a smaller 8GiB OS disk - having successfully created this in my portal and labelled useastOS - Azure is failing to allow me to swap from the previous 127GiB disk to the smaller 8GiB Disk. On the "Swap OS Disk" menu illustrated, you will see there is no option to use the useastOS disk.
Puzzling.
This is a managed disk and so there is no reason whatsoever as to why Azure is not giving me the option.
So my question is there any valid reason as to why Azure is not allowing me to swap to the smaller useastOS or is this bug within Azure that I need to make Azure aware of?
When you are creating a Managed Disk like this, there is no SO installed, it is an empty disk, that's why Azure assumes it is a data disk, not a SO disk.
Now, when you upload your VHD disk to blob storage, you can tell Azure that this disk is OS and not a data disk like this.
Looking for upload VHD to Azure blob, here it is an example https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/windows/prepare-for-upload-vhd-image.
Your question is how to swap SO disk to a new one smaller, this is what I understood, in case you just want to add a second disk as a data disk, you can go to VM overview, from blade disk, you can add it easily.
Anyway, I hope that I could help in any :)
Just in case, confirm that you selected an operation system when you created this disk useastOS. For example, in my case it is Windows, but disk can be either Windows or Linux, when you don't select anything, Azure assumes it is a data disk, not an operation system.

What is the smallest vm available in azure?

I'm interested in creating a VM in Azure and downloading to my own machine to use in Hyper-V. The past couple of attempts at creating a VM have resulted in a 127Gb image. Can anyone tell me what the absolute smallest windows vm available is and how I can choose this in set up. There doesn't seem to be any options for anything smaller than this.
You can use windows vms labeled as smalldisk, those will have 30gb os disk size. any linux vm will have 30gb os disk by default.
if using non portal, you can specify os disk size, I didnt ever try to downsize it below 30, but cant imagine why it wont work (unless there isn't enough space on the disk).
Azure recently announced new B-series VM size, B1ls, which has the smallest memory and lowest cost among Azure VM instances. This offering is in response to customers who were looking for entry-level offerings. B1ls has 512 MiB of memory and 1 vCPU, and it costs only $0.0052 (US East) per hour.
B1ls is available only on Linux.
Reference: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/b-series-update-b1ls-is-now-available/

What are the data disks used for?

I need to know the difference between the SSD disk and the data disk. According to this capture, this virtual machine has a hard disk ssd 16gb, and 4 disks data. But these 4 disks, how much do they have? Are they ssd? what are they for?
enter image description here
data disks can be ssd or not, depending on how you set them up. they are used to store data :)
amount of data disks you can attach depends on the vm sku. you dont always have to attach 4 data disks (or whatever vm supports, you can have 0 - VM SKU maximum data disks).
The 16gb ssd is local ssd (local to the host machine hosting your vm) attached to the VM (not OS disk). its a temporary drive - meaning it can go away when you reboot vm, so content will be lost and you will get a new temporary drive. it can be used to store throw away logs, for example, or temporary files. IO operations on this disk do not count towards IO limit and this drive is completely free (you pay for the VM SKU and it is part of that cost).
you can learn about data disk prices here: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/managed-disks/. Storage prices do not take into account os or data disks. they just bill you for storage.
reference:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/windows/attach-managed-disk-portal
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/windows/attach-disk-ps
It means in addition to the OS disk, you can connect 4 data disks to the VM.
It does not mean there are 4 disks, just that you can add 4 if you want.
You should discuss the VM requirements with your client. Maybe he needs an additional data disk, maybe not.
The capture you posted, specifies that this VM can take up to 4 data disks. The price does not include them. Also, you should check the Azure price calculator to generate more accurate offers.

Why are D1V2 instances not showing up while creating a new VM instance on Azure?

Last year, same time, i created two Ubuntu instances on Azure. I got the option of selecting a D1V2 instance back then. However, i am trying to create Ubuntu 16.04 instance, but while selecting the size I am only getting DS1V2 virtual machines, which cost the same but has much lower local SSD ( on 7GB ). The D1V2 sizes dont show up at all. Anybody has any idea why the D1V2 sizes are not showing up?
D1V2 are not using SSD's for OS disk, therefore you cannot provision D1V2 with OS disk type set as SSD, use HDD to provision D1V2.
Reference: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/virtual-machines-windows-sizes

Azure Virtual Machine low disk space

I have SQL Server running on a Large Azure Virtual Machine.
I have an attached disk where all the database MDFs, logging, backup and restore files are kept. Nothing is kept on the C:.
I just logged in now and noticed that there is only 58MB left on the C:! Is it possible to increase this disk space. Is there something I can delete from the C:?
You cannot increase your os disk size. Not sure when you created your Virtual Machine. I know that a long time ago the size was set at (I believe) 30GB, and now the os disks should be around 127GB. You may want to check what size the OS disk is.
I'm not sure what chewed up your OS disk space except maybe some type of temporary os storage.

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