I can't get my VM disk restored in Azure: it is only "converted" to the Storage Account linked to my VM.
Does anyone know how to get a VM fully restored from a Recovery Service Vault backup in Azure please?
Edit :
For additional precision, I made a simple Linux VM hosting a test website in order to experience Azure's backup and restore feature.
So once the test website was online, I waited for a backup job to be done.
Then I deliberately broke the test website inside the VM, and launched a disk restore.
Unfortunately, the restore did nothing to the VM. I checked on the jobs and restore was marked as "Successful", and a VM restart did nothing.
Anyway, I can find the "vhd" in the Conainer tab of the Storage Account. But I can't find a way to attach it to the VM...
Is the disk restoration feature even supposed to work like intended ?
I tried to replicate a backed up restore of a virtual machine using Azure Site Recovery.
When you restore the virtual machine you have the option to select if you want to restore the disks or the virtual machine.
Selecting here to restore as a VM, will create the VM for you.
You can check that status of the restore by going to the jobs section of the machine in ASR.
For reference, see this page for more detailed instructions.
This likely flies in the face of what Azure thinks it can do, but have you tried to create the VM first and then just restore your data? Other possible options are:
The user you are logged in as does have the correct permissions to create a VM in that space as well as restore the data, yes?
And you did select Recovery Service vaults in the portal, correct?
check if the original VM had any special conditions, such as multiple NICs or a load balancer. Any custom VM configurations, including HUB licensing, will not be duplicated with the Create Virtual Machine option as it uses Quick Create. You will need to use PowerShell to attach the restore disks to your chosen VM configuration. You can get additional information on PowerShell and Azure backups here.
And in the link that kim provided above, scroll down to the "Create a new VM from a restore point" section and review the options and notes for creating a new VM. You can get more information on ASR at this page.
Related
I have a couple of VMs that I want to backup and restore easily and often. Preferably as a group.
I have tried default Azure backup and restore but noticed that it doesn't seem to do much. It is easy to create and schedule backups but it is not clear to me how these backups can be used to bring a VM back to its original state.
The use cases for the default backup / restore seem to be very different from what I expected. I expected something somewhat similar to VirtualBox: take a snapshot and then restore takes the VM back to the snapshot.
Restore of VM in Azure does not seem to be a supported use case. I think the idea is more to clone / duplicate the machine.
The default "restore" is a feature to create another VM because it you try to restore Azure shows an error message
A virtual machine with the same already exists in the selected resource group. Please change the virtual machine name or select a new resource group.
There is an option to restore disks. This seems to work at first. Restore job completes successfully but nothing it restored. The file system is the same as before restore.
There is no detailed log so there is no way to determine what is happening. There is only exit status: success restore completed successfully.
Are there other ways to mimic VirtualBox functionality? Take snapshots and restore VM's using such snapshots?
Does MS have plans to enhance backup in such way that it also supports restore?
Snapshot works by capturing image state of a virtual machine. In Azure, you can snapshot your VHD and restore that snapshot whenever you'd like. Get started with snapshot here https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/windows/snapshot-copy-managed-disk
Disk snapshot works best in case your virtual machine uses one disk (for the OS). Or if that virtual machine has more than one disk, disk snapshot is still useful, but takes time and may result disk management overhead. In that case, you could go with image generalization to capturing the whole virtual machine's state at once using tool like sysprep (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/windows/capture-image-resource)
From your screenshot, the problem is exactly what is highlighted in red. You cannot overwrite your virtual machine to the existing one in the same resource group. You must restore it somewhere else.
Azure Site Recovery and Backup is designed to work with large deployment of virtual machines, with some capabilities of automation and disaster recovery.
I have an Azure VM with un-managed disk. I want to move it to another region.
Is there any other way than generalizing my current VM?
Is there any other way than generalizing my current VM?
Azure does not support changing a VM's location. You need copy the VM's VHD to another location and use that VHD to create a new VM.
If you don't use current VM's VHD to create multiple VMs in other location, you don't need generalize your VM. Please refer to following steps.
Stop your VM.
Create a new storage account and blob container in another location.
Copy VHD to the new storage account, you could use Azcopy. For more information about Azcopy please refer to this article.
AzCopy /Source:https://shuidisks446.blob.core.windows.net/vhds /Dest:https://shuidiag102.blob.core.windows.net/vhds /SourceKey:sGqtdFHQWQWYyf2tRWGF5jkeAEubTp13AVaeTM25QogxXE+K0Ezq1ulcs18qGVPhCEp6ULdLLbKVa7fMbUvYZg== /DestKey:iCjeS+eegjkSJXHjH2UqCkqXnUPiCGvxaOG0Ad2LoPgUnvBoWl9wQJtC1jc//lOj4CF7khpLQe791P4QeyTY6Q== /Pattern:shui20161222141315.vhd
Use the VHD to create a new VM. It is easy for you to recreate with existing VHD by using this template.
Important: Because you don't generalize your currently VM, please don't start two VM at the same time. The second would have the same network issue.
Yes, even though the VM is generalized if you restore from backup the working state will get restored
Plan your VM backup infrastructure in Azure
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/backup/backup-azure-vms-introduction
Back up Azure virtual machines to a Recovery Services vault
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/backup/backup-azure-arm-vms
Use Azure portal to restore virtual machines
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/backup/backup-azure-arm-restore-vms
Azure Site Recovery now offers migration capability between some regions. See this link for details.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/site-recovery/azure-to-azure-tutorial-migrate
Notably, you can only move between supported regions as shown here - basically the same continent.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/site-recovery/azure-to-azure-support-matrix#region-support
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 would like to migrate our test server - a Windows Azure VM running Windows 2008 server (running AD DC and variety of apps such as Dynamics CRM) - to a virtual network.
I am looking for a safe way to migrate the server to the virtual network.
My research to date indicates that I can create a new VM using the same OS disk. However when I attempt to create a new VM the existing OS disk is not visible in the list of images.
Is anybody able to point me in the right direction as to how this is achieved? Also, do you have any recommendations with respect to a rollback strategy (e.g. Backup tools)?
Alan.
I haven't verified the flow, but it should be working fine. Follow these steps:
Make sure you are not using static IP on your AD/DC. The IP Addresses in Azure shall always be DHCP allocated!
Shut down the AD/DC
Copy the VHD blob to a new blob! I strongly suggest that you have the OS Disk (VHD blob) in a storage account which is in the same affinity group as the Virtual Network. So, if the current OS Disk is not in a Storage Account, which is in the same affinity group as the VNet, create a new storage account and copy the original VHD there. Please note that you should copy the blob only when the VM is shut down!
Create the sub-net you want to bring the VM in. (probably you already have created it).
Create a new VM using the copied VHD as an OS Disk and selecting the Virtual Network and sub-net.
Possible gotchas with this migration:
IP Address of AD/DC will change when added to the Virtual Network. Be prepared and never assign static IP Address to a VM in Azure
You will not see the VHD in the list of possible images to use - in that case use some kind of storage explorer (such as Cloud Storage Studio) to make sure there is no existing lease on the blob with the VHD. If there is a lease - break it!
A suggested VNet setup for AD/DC/DNS infrastructure in azure is clearly described in this blog post