Migrating A Virtual Machine From One Azure Subscription to Another

Introduction

Azure subscription is like a prepaid account. You required balance in it before utilizing its resourses. Sometime its account balance (Azure credits) is going to expire, and once it goes to zero you will not be able to use its resources, until you will refill account again.

If you have more than one azure subscription and you don’t want to refill your account, you can move your resource from one account to another account. Here we are migrating Azure VM from one Azure subscription to another subscription. Please note, if any of your subscription is disabled, due to zero credits, this migration will not work.

Steps to Migrate a VM on another subscription

This process contains the following three steps:

Migrating VM’s blob on another subscription.
Create a new disk on target subscription for the blob.
Create the Virtual Machine with the created disk.

Migrating VM’s blob on another subscription

To migrate blob which is used by Virtual machine, follow the steps in PowerShell.

Connect to Subscription by PowerShell

Type Add-AzureAccount command in PowerShell, a window will open, enter your email address here which has the subscription.
On next page, enter your credentials to log in in to your Azure account.
Now you can use PowerShell to work with your account.

Get the subscriptions details

Get-Azure Subscription: This command lists all the subscriptions which are associated with your email

subscriptions details

Get the current Subscription

Get-AzureSubscription-Current: If you have more than one subscription to get the current one execute the following command.

For more details refer link.

Get the Current subscription id

(Get-AzureSubscription -Current).SubscriptionId

Set current Subscription

If you have more than one subscription, and your current subscription is different from your required subscription, then set your desired subscription as the current subscription:

By Name:

Select-AzureSubscription -SubscriptionName anmolbadaya –Current

Here anmolbadaya is my Subscription Name

By ID:

Select-AzureSubscription -SubscriptionId 03672ab6-f116-4ba1-91de-a085d0f07402 –Current

Here 03672ab6-f116-4ba1-91de-a085d0f07402 is my subscription id.

For more details refer link.

List all virtual machines in current Subscription

Get-AzureVM

It will display all VMs with service name and VM name. Please check VM which you want to migrate and exist here.

AzureVM

To Know a VM’s Storage Account Name

To migrating a VM we require VM storage account name, execute the following command to get it.

$disk = Get-AzureDisk | Where-Object { $_.AttachedTo.RoleName -eq "VMName" }
$mediaLink = $disk.MediaLink
$storageAccountName = $mediaLink.Host.Split('.')[0]
$storageAccountName

Get container and vhd file details of your VM

To migrate a VM we also container name and vhd file name. Get it by the following command:

Get-AzureVM –ServiceName “anmolwin8vs” –Name “anmolwin8vs” | Get-AzureOSDisk

command prompt

MediaLink value is the complete path of vhd file; you can see vhd file name here with .vhd extension and container name just before .vhd file. Here container name is vhds, and VHD file name is anmolwin8vs-anmolwin8vs-2015-09-01.vhd.

VHD blob copy from one Subscription to other

# Source VHD blob#
$blobName = "vhd file name"
# Provide Source Storage Account details #
$sourceStorageAccountName = "source Account name"
$sourceAccountKey = "Source Storage Account Key"
$sourceAccountContext = New-AzureStorageContext –StorageAccountName $sourceStorageAccountName -StorageAccountKey $sourceAccountKey
$sourceContainer = "Container Name"
# Provide Destination Storage Account Details #
$destinationStorageAccountName = "Destniation Account Name"
$destinationAccountKey = "Destination Storage Account Key"
$destinationContext = New-AzureStorageContext –StorageAccountName $destinationStorageAccountName -StorageAccountKey $destinationAccountKey
# Copy the blob #
$blobCopy = Start-AzureStorageBlobCopy -DestContainer $destinationContainerName `
-DestContext $destinationContext `
-SrcBlob $blobName `
-Context $sourceContext `

Example

# VHD blob to copy #
$blobName = "anmolwin8vs-anmolwin8vs-2015-09-01.vhd"
# Source Storage Account Information #
$sourceStorageAccountName = "anmolstorageacc"
$sourceKey = "rF4Xp4sfozYorNQaq1OJ7PfN/IXhY9HPUhP3H7njU5ogD9Q1VBp2yhn9v/FSeHt5bKklS2tvKe1qMv3aNXQ5Xg=="
$sourceContext = New-AzureStorageContext –StorageAccountName $sourceStorageAccountName -StorageAccountKey $sourceKey
$sourceContainer = "vhds"
# Destination Storage Account Information #
$destinationStorageAccountName = "portalvhds8mzfbcnfbn3f1"
$destinationKey = "dPFG2UqP/EseJyGs5Bpx3URYzycyvdHoRKKFG7tHPW6oudWGRKfHZnqUHIXphOKkiL8GqP841Dwddm8rv9xDoA=="
$destinationContext = New-AzureStorageContext –StorageAccountName $destinationStorageAccountName -StorageAccountKey $destinationKey
# Create the destination container #
$destinationContainerName = "vhds"
# Copy the blob #
$blobCopy = Start-AzureStorageBlobCopy -DestContainer $destinationContainerName `
-DestContext $destinationContext `
-SrcBlob $blobName `
-Context $sourceContext `
-SrcContainer $sourceContainer

In case, destination Container Name does not exist, run the following command to create a new one:

$destinationContainerName = "vhds"
New-AzureStorageContainer -Name $destinationContainerName -Context $destinationContext -Permission Blob

Blob copy using AzCopy tool

You can also copy blob by using AzCopy tool.

Download and install AzCopy utility from here.
Install it in your computer. After installation open command prompt and Run below command:

AzCopy https://sourceaccount.blob.core.windows.net/container1 https://destaccount.blob.core.windows.net/container2 /sourcekey:key1 /destkey:key2 fileNameWhichyouWantToCopy.txt
By default, the AzCopy installation creates a folder named AzCopy under %ProgramFiles(x86)%\Microsoft SDKs\Azure\ (on Windows 64-bit machine) or %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft SDKs\Azure\ (on Windows 32-bit machine). For more details on how to use AzCopy for different scenarios, check out “Getting Started with the AzCopy Command-Line Utility”.

Example:

AzCopy /Source:https://anmolstorages.blob.core.windows.net/ anmolstorageacc /Dest:https://anmolmachineVMonkiritmac.blob.core.windows.net/destinationvhds8 /SourceKey:s2NgY75yIY1uPisP79mxljQ7yK6VqCLbVfY4a247AJtqa4ug+Dvg1GYvondmW4Dn0gxpJEBYm81bAuY9GVIqIw== /DestKey:q5EQPhhJPQVKwgqgSEpDvLWUoGKAaHR3YR1BP5+aRqi/Mzjp19PKbOQWfhBb4VEPrKf7DEMudaypChvkdDQcqw== /Pattern:AnmolMachineVS-AnmolMachineVS-0-20150713.vhd

code

Create a new disk on target subscription for the blob

Till now, we have just moved a blob to new subscription; we have to create an Azure disk to boot from it. For this on azure portal here are the steps:

Click on Virtual Machine:
Click on the DISKS.
Click on Create.
An explorer window will open; we have to provide a disk name and have to select the blob from the destination container which we copied.
Please select the toggle “The VHD contains an operating system.” It means disk which we are creating is OS disk not the data disk.
Click on correct sign, and the following screen will be visible:

You can also use the following PowerShell command for creating disk:

Add-AzureDisk -DiskName "anmolWin8Disk" `
-OS Windows `
-MediaLocation "https://portalvhds8mzfbcnfbn3f1.blob.core.windows.net/vhds/ Fileanmolwin8vs-anmolwin8vs-2015-09-01.vhd " `
-Verbose

Verbose