Cannot move VM from US East 2 to US East

Question

I need to move a Windows VM from US East 2 to US East, so that i can use an existing Virtual newtork on US East, tried using Azure Resource Mover , but the VM isn't listed in available resources.

Answer 1

Hello John Holliday

Azure Resource Mover only lists virtual machines that fully meet its support matrix. If a VM does not appear, it means the VM or one of its dependencies is not supported for a region move for example: specific disk, encryption, networking, or VM configuration.

Microsoft does not surface unsupported VMs in the selection list.

Using Resource Mover, you can currently move the following resources across regions:

• Azure VMs and associated disks (Azure Spot VMs are not currently supported)
• Encrypted Azure VMs and associated disks. This includes VMs with Azure disk encryption enabled and Azure VMs using default server-side encryption (both with platform-managed keys and customer-managed keys)
• NICs
• Availability sets
• Azure virtual networks
• Public IP addresses (Public IP will not be retained across regions)
• Network security groups (NSGs)
• Internal and public load balancers
• Azure SQL databases and elastic pools

Only supported Azure VMs and configurations appear as selectable resources in Azure Resource Mover.

Please have a look into the below document for more details:

Azure Resource Mover – Supported resources and limitations https://learn.microsoft.com/azure/resource-mover/overview https://learn.microsoft.com/azure/resource-mover/common-questions

The region is grayed out when creating a VM from a snapshot might be due to below following reasons:

• Snapshots and managed disks are region‑scoped
• A VM created directly from a snapshot or managed disk must be created in the same region
• Because the snapshot was created in East US 2, the Region field is locked to East US 2

You cannot change the region during VM creation from a snapshot. Snapshots cannot be directly used to create resources in another region. To use them elsewhere, they must be copied to the target region first.

Reference: Managed disk and snapshot limitations

https://learn.microsoft.com/azure/virtual-machines/managed-disks-overview

3. Please have a look into below Supported approach to move the VM to East US:

Since you want to use an existing Virtual Network in East US, the supported options are:

A. Azure Site Recovery:

• Replicates the VM from East US 2 to East US
• Recreates the VM in the target region
• Allows you to select or map to an existing VNet in East US
• Fully supported by Microsoft for region migration

Reference: https://learn.microsoft.com/azure/site-recovery/azure-to-azure-tutorial-migrate

B. Manual disk copy approach:

If this is a one‑time move:

1. Create an incremental snapshot
2. Copy the snapshot to East US
3. Create a managed disk in East US
4. Create a new VM in East US using that disk and attach it to the existing VNet

Reference: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/disks-copy-incremental-snapshot-across-regions?tabs=azure-cli

Changing region during VM creation from a snapshot, Attaching East US 2 disks or snapshots directly to a VM in East US and Moving a VM across regions without recreation (Azure does not support “in‑place” region moves) are not the supported ways to move VM's from one region to another region.

Thanks,
Suchitra.

Answer 2

John Holliday hi and thx for join me here at Q&A portal,

yeah u cant “move” a VM across regions like that, thats why Resource Mover not showing it. Resource Mover has limits and VMs often not eligible (disk type, extensions, networking, etc), so it just doesnt list them. Real way to do this is recreate VM in target region looks like

stop VM > capture image or snapshot disks > copy disks to eastus > create new VM in eastus using those disks > attach to ur existing VNet.

or use Azure Site Recovery if u want semi-automated migration, but for one VM its overkill

important gotcha :)))) VNet is region-bound, so u cant attach eastus2 VM to eastus VNet, thats why u must rebuild. Other words no direct move, u need redeploy VM in new region.

rgds,

Alex

&pls if it helps accept my answer

Answer 3

Hi @John Holliday ,

moving Virtual Machines and related disks are supported by Azure Resource Mover. An exclusion is the movement of Azure Spot VMs, Spot VMs aren't supported by Azure Resource Mover:

Source: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/resource-mover/common-questions#what-resources-can-i-move-across-regions-using-resource-mover

Please verify the required Azure Services, for instance the VM SKU is supported and available in the target Azure region.

For instance the VM B-Series (v1) isn't available in all Azure region because this VM SKU series is deprecated.

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(If the reply was helpful please don't forget to upvote and/or accept as answer, thank you)

Regards

Andreas Baumgarten