6 thoughts on “How to duplicate an Azure Virtual Machine

  1. nice guide! most articles talk about using Azcopy and generalizing a VM to then redeploy, this is far simpler!

    1. Thanks Aaron!

      Generalising/Sysprepping a VM and capturing this as an image and deploying this to other VMs is the more cleaner way, as it removes machine specific details and only captures the configuration of the machine. This is needed when you deploy multiple machines in the same network. Whereas duplicating the underlying VHD will keep the user profiles, data and machine config so its good for a like for like duplication but not good for cloning a machine that would sit in the same network and cause potential conflicts.

  2. One of the most succinct and accurate articles I have ever read. This saves anyone a lot of time and effort. I thank you very much.

    1. I haven’t tried this, but my thoughts are you should be able to make a “copy” of the disk using a snapshot, then download the .vhdx file. I would need to investigate first!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *