How to move Virtual Machine between subscriptions

[hung-doan]

Type: Guide Descriptions: In some case you have to move your current VM to another subscription (because of billing problem or ...) Unfortunately, Up to now (2015 Dec 21st), Ms Azure haven't had any plan to support to change the service subscription. So, you have to do it manually follow this step:

1. Capture your current VM from subcription A
2. Copy Images to subcription B
3. Copy storage from subcription A to subcription B (If It is required)

Solutions: Requirement

• Use ARM mode
• User Azure CLI
• Move machine VM01 from subscription S01 to subcription S02
• Move data in storage account Store01 from subscription S01 to subcription S02

Prepare

• Azure CLI installed

BEGIN [Step 01] Capture VM01 image

• Because It require your VM have to be generalized to make an capture-image, so you have to generalize your VM first

  vm generalize myGroup VM01

• Then capture azure vm capture -g vamsproduction vams-web-machine-capture

  After you capture the VM, look at your OS's storage account, you can find a new *.vhd (some thing like vm01store.blob.core.windows.net/system/Microsoft.Compute/Images/vhds/captured_osDiskName.vhd)

[Step 02] Re-create your VM from your captured-image

• Azure doesn't allow to use images file from different subscription. So you have to copy your image to your new subscription. To do that, you can use AzCopy tools

    AzCopy /Source:https://vm01store.blob.core.windows.net/system/SourceType:Blob /SourceKey:put_your_key_here /Dest:https://vm01newstore.blob.core.windows.net/system /DestType:Blob /DestKey:put_your_key_here

• Create new VM from your image

    azure vm create --image-urn  https://vm01store.blob.core.windows.net/system/Microsoft.Compute/Images/vhds/captured_osDiskName.vhd  --storage-account-name vm01newstore yourGroupName newm01 "Southeast Asia" "Windows"

NOTE Now you can remote to your new VM. But after create your new VM you can receive error: VM has been created, but there was an error during provisioning. It's ok, keep go ahead.

[Step 03] Move data from old subscription.

• Use can use AzCopy to copy your data to new server as well

Ref: [1] azure-cli-arm-commands [2] HOW TO CREATE A VIRTUAL MACHINE FROM A CUSTOM IMAGE USING ARM API AND POWERSHELL [3] Using CLI to Capture and Deploy VMs [4] How to capture a classic Linux virtual machine as an image [5] Storage use AzCopy [6] Image capture issue / VM unexpectedly started after guest-initiated shutdown [7] Capture an image of an Azure Windows virtual machine created with the classic deployment mode