How To Clone a Virtual Machine in Azure

This is quite simple, once you know how to do it but... when you don't...

My favourite way of cloning virtual machines has always been copying the hard disks and deploying the virtual machine in a different network segment. We do have all the ingredients we need for this recipe in Azure so let's get to it!

You will need:

• The blob that contains the vhd you want to clone
• A new Cloud Service (or one where the source virtual machine is not running)
• Notepad.exe (or similar, although nothing beats the original)
• Azure PowerShell
• Attention to detail
• Just a bit of patience

Let's start.

The first thing you need to do is to find out the disk(s) you want to clone. In the virtual machine's dashboard page, if you scroll down a bit, you will be able to see them.

After you scroll down do not forget to scroll right too, the URL we need is a bit hidden... copy it in your notepad.

This is the address of the blob that contains the disk and in it you can find:

http://[yourStorageAccount].blob.core.windows.net/[yourContainerName]/[yourBlobName].vhd

Finally you need  the primary access key for your storage account. 

Go to Storage, select your Storage Account and look on the footer of the page for the key icon:

There copy your primary key and paste it to your notepad.

And that's all you need.

The PowerShell code I use (that I copied mostly from  http://michaelwasham.com/windows-azure-powershell-reference-guide/copying-vhds-blobs-between-storage-accounts/) is this:

#From http://michaelwasham.com/windows-azure-powershell-reference-guide/copying-vhds-blobs-between-storage-accounts/
#And after that from http://www.codegrimoire.com
####################################################################################################################
### Source VHD - anonymous access container ###
$storageUri = "http://yourStorageAccount.blob.core.windows.net/"
$containerName = "yourContainerName" ##I am using the same source and destination here
$sourceBlobName = "yourBlobame.vhd"

### Destination Blob
$destBlobName = "newBlobName.vhd"

######### New Disk Name
$newDiskName =  "newDiskName"
$newDiskLabel = "BootDisk" ##In the documentation it is either BootDisk or DataDisk but you can call it something else
$isOsDisk = $true ##$true Or $false. As I only work with windows I will not bother about other OSs in this script

### Target Storage Account ###
$storageAccount = "yourStorageAccount"
$storageKey = "yourPrimaryKey" ##Primary Access Key


###################################################################################
############  Automated script for creating the new VHD  ##########################
###################################################################################

$srcUri = ($storageUri.trim('/'), $containerName.trim('/'), $sourceBlobName) -join '/'
$destUri = ($storageUri.trim('/'), $containerName.trim('/'), $destBlobName) -join '/'
 
### Create the destination context for authenticating the copy
$destContext = New-AzureStorageContext  –StorageAccountName $storageAccount -StorageAccountKey $storageKey  
 
### Create the target container in storage
### Not necessary as i am using an existing one ### New-AzureStorageContainer -Name $containerName -Context $destContext 
 
### Start the Asynchronous Copy ###
$blob1 = Start-AzureStorageBlobCopy -srcUri $srcUri -DestContainer $containerName -DestBlob $destBlobName -DestContext $destContext

### Loop until complete ###                                    
Do{
  $status = $blob1 | Get-AzureStorageBlobCopyState 
  ### Print out status ###
  $status.Status
  Start-Sleep 5
}While($status.Status -eq "Pending") ##This doesn't work as you would expect but the idea is good and maybe they will change the way Get-AzureStorageBlobCopyState works :)


######## After the new blob has been created we will add the new disk #############
if ($isOsDisk){
    Add-AzureDisk -DiskName $newDiskName -MediaLocation $destUri -Label $newDiskLabel -OS "Windows"
}
else{
    Add-AzureDisk -DiskName $newDiskName -MediaLocation $destUri -Label $newDiskLabel
}

Once you edit the script with your data and run it you will have to wait for a couple of minutes before the new disk is available. You do not need to turn off the source virtual machine although it's better safe than sorry

After that go to Virtual Machines, New, Compute, Virtual Machine, From Gallery and choose My disks in the lower part of the left column:

The disk you have just created will appear in the list and after that you just need to create the new virtual machine normally.

By the way, we need an Azure + SharePoint administrator in London, do you oblige?

Is it a good idea to call the cloned VMs Dolly?