I have a VM running in Azure. Is it possible to download the VHD from blob storage and use it to create/launch a VM on my local machine using hypervisor?
If this is possible, do you believe Windows 2012 server licensing could be an issue?
Yes, from purely technical perspective it should work locally once VHD is downloaded. If VHD fails to mount locally, make a local copy of a downloaded VHD file and then mount that resulting copy.
Regarding your licensing question, according to this page: http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/licensing-faq/
Can I move Windows Server 2012 licenses and images between Hyper-V and Azure? Windows Server licenses are not eligible for License
Mobility through Software Assurance. The license to run Windows Server
in the Azure environment is included in the per-minute cost of your
Windows Virtual Machine. Licenses for use of Windows Server
on-premises (whether in a VHD or otherwise) must be obtained
separately through volume licensing.
In other words, the Windows license cost is included in the Azure per-minute cost you pay. If you download the VHD and use it in house, you must have a license.
Related
I have a requirement of Windows version 1809/build 17763 VM on azure for some task. I choked and was not able to find the VM on azure. How can I setup windows VM with above version/build
You can create a VHD with Windows OS version you need locally then upload this VHD to Azure and use this VHD to create a managed image so that you can create VMs by this managed image.
For detailed steps see this official doc.
Btw, I noticed that there is a VM image based on windows server 1809, you can find it while creating VMs => see all images:
We have Windows Server 2016 Azure Virtual Machines using managed disks.
I am trying to create an Azure Data Factory pipeline that will let me copy certain files from a folder on the hard drives of those VMs, to our Azure SQL Server. I was quite surprised to see no ADF connectors available for Azure VMs; then I checked Logic Apps - same issue, no available connectors for connecting to Azure VM's there either.
Then I did some Googling to find out how, in general, you can access an Azure VM file structure from outside (without using Remote Desktop) and was even more surprised to see that there isn't any info out there about this (not even that it can't be done).
Is it possible for me to access the file system of my Windows Server 2016 Azure VM without using Remote Desktop? The VM's are running Managed Disks if that makes any difference.
You can either ssh your_vm_ip and then use rsync command to download or upload files.
rsync -au --progress your_user_name#ip.ip.ip.ip:/remote_dir/remote_dir/ /local_dir/local_dir/
Otherwise you can install Dropbox in the VM and your local computer, transfering small files in the shared Dropbox folder is very fast..
Here are some instruction slides on the Azure storage system and their Storage Explorer App.
I have used Azure backup service to backup single laptop/desktop over the WAN. However what if I have 100 laptop to be backed-up.
Have someone used Azure backup service to protect multiple laptop and desktops?
there are a couple of components that come with Azure backup, each of them has a specific use case as below:
1- Azure Backup (MARS) agent
Back up files and folders on physical or virtual Windows OS (VMs can be on-premises or in Azure)
No separate backup server required.
2- System Center DPM
Application-aware snapshots (VSS)
Full flexibility for when to take backups
Recovery granularity (all)
Can use Recovery Services vault
Linux support on Hyper-V and VMware VMs
Back up and restore VMware VMs using DPM 2012 R2
3- Azure Backup Server
App aware snapshots (VSS)
Full flexibility for when to take backups
Recovery granularity (all)
Can use Recovery Services vault
Linux support on Hyper-V and VMware VMs
Back up and restore VMware VMs
Does not require a System Center license
4-Azure IaaS VM Backup
Native backups for Windows/Linux
No specific agent installation required
Fabric-level backup with no backup infrastructure needed
For full info regarding Which Azure Backup components should I use?: checkout the following link: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/backup/backup-introduction-to-azure-backup
as suggested by #Vikranth S, MARS would be your best option for the use case you've described.
-Adam
There are two azure backup products which can be used to backup on-premises workloads.
Using Microsoft Azure Recovery services agent (MARS)
2.Using Microsoft Azure Backup server (MABS)
With MARS agent you can protect Files & Folders and System State of only Windows clients and server operating system, but you have to manually register each and every server with recovery services vault.
With MABs you can protect entire (Windows and Linux) Machines, if you register one server with recovery services vault, you can protect all other Machines are in same network by using that server. With MABS you can only protect Server operating system starting from Win 2008 R2. Please let me know if you have any other queries
Is it possible to download a vhd (or vhdx) image of Windows Azure Cloud Service and run it locally on my computer in Hyper-V?
How to do that?
Thanks
For Cloud Services (web/worker roles), you cannot download a vhd. Remember that the running Windows image is created with a baseline image, then your deployment package is attached and your code is executed. If you spin up another instance, it results in the same starting point. There's no way to take the running machine and capture a vhd. VHD-based operation is all part of Virtual Machines. And with those, you can download the vhd.
I am developing an Azure application, part of which involves users browsing an online filesystem. TO do this, I am trying to use the Windows Azure drive, but I can't figure out how to access it from client side, or how to make it accessible on the server side.
At the moment, I only know how to make the drive:
CloudStorageAccount devStorage = CloudStorageAccount.DevelopmentStorageAccount;
CloudBlobClient client = devStorage.CreateCloudBlobClient();
CloudBlobContainer container = new CloudBlobContainer("teacher", client);
CloudDrive.InitializeCache(localCache.RootPath,
localCache.MaximumSizeInMegabytes);
CloudDrive drive = new CloudDrive(container.GetPageBlobReference("drive1").Uri, devStorage.Credentials);
drive.Create(50);
I am using C# as my development language.
All help is greatly appreciated!
There are couple of things you need to understand with Windows Azure Cloud Drive:
Cloud drives are actual Page Blobs which are stored on Windows Azure Blob storage and mount as a drive (you will get a drive letter depend on your machine drive statistics) in a machine where you can provide Windows Azure Run time environment.
Programmatic it is very easy to mount a cloud drive in your code as you showed in your example however one thing is missed that is to be sure to have Windows Azure RunTime environment where this code can run.
I have written a utility to mount azure drive within Windows Azure VM (Web, Worker or VM Role) located here:
http://mountvhdazurevm.codeplex.com/
You can run above tool directly in Windows Azure VM and can also this the exact same code in your Compute Emulator (Windows Azure Development Fabric) so the bottom line is as long as you can provide Windows Azure Runtime environment, you can mount a Page blob VHD drive.
I have seen several cases where someone asked me to mount a Windows Azure Page Blob as drive in local machine (client and server, anywhere) and the actual hurdle was to bring Windows Azure Run time in local environment because it is not available. In some cases a few person went ahead and tries to use Windows Azure SDK to have Windows Azure runtime made
available in their desktop, created a dummy web role and then mount the VHD which was mounted in local machine and a drive letter was made available as well. I am not sure about such kind of solution because this is not Windows Azure compute emulator is designed.
Hope this description provide you some guideline.
I'm not sure I understand your question properly, but it sounds like you want multiple client applications - presumably on machines that are not on Azure - to access your Azure drive?
Unfortunately, Azure drives can only be accessed from Azure web/worker or VM role instances.
I've written a WebDAV Server which runs on an Azure Website which will allow clients, including Windows Explorer and Office to connect to Azure Storage. It uses a combination of Table and Blob Storage to store the file structure and files. I've tested it with Windows Explorer and Word 2013. Although this isn't a clouddrive solution it's still using Azure Storage as a backend and it's accessible from WebDAV clients. You might find it useful..
https://github.com/ichivers/AzureDAV
One additional point to the existing answers. You can always download the blob backing your Cloud Drive and mount it on a local system. The blob is really just a VHD. However, the download time isn't going to trivial unless the drive is small.
Erick