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I have a VM that was running fine. I wanted to clone to a 2nd VM. I created an image and tried to create the 2nd VM but that failed to deploy. I removed the 2nd VM and created manually. When I tried to start up both VMs, the new one started but the original VM failed saying it is generalized and a Start VM command wont work. All my applications and setups are on that VM and I need to recover it and be able to start it
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Hello, @William Bertolotti !
Hopefully @Jackson Martins explanation of generalizing VMs and the blog on how to clone a VM has been helpful. Please consider accepting an answer to help increase visibility of this question for other members of the Microsoft Q&A community. If not, please let us know what is still needed in the comments so the question can be answered. Thank you for helping to improve Microsoft Q&A!
Hi!
When you generalize a VM, you can no longer use it, only copies from it.
Reference: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/generalize#windows
Thanks Jackson. I have an image from it but when I create a VM from that image, it doesnt bring over users or anything. Is the image not just like a copy/source to build 'like' VM's from?
@williambertolotti
Do you need the user account or the information contained in the folders? You can open the c: \ users and check
type "net user" on the command prompt to see all users and disabled users
Thanks Jackson. I have an image from it but when I create a VM from that image, it doesnt bring over users or anything. Is the image not just like a copy/source to build 'like' VM's from?
Hello, @William Bertolotti !
How do I clone a VM?
You can make a generalized copy of a VM however generalizing a VM will remove machine specific information such as personal account and security information as mentioned by @Jackson Martins .
Snapshots (as used in disaster recovery) create a full, read-only copy of a virtual hard disk (VHD) which you can use as a point in time backup (or a clone) of your VM. You create a snapshot, then create a managed disk from the snapshot.
Luis Beltran has posted a great blog that covers the process with step-by-step screenshots:
https://dev.to/icebeam7/cloning-azure-vms-1889
I hope this helps!