How to clone a prodcution VM in azure?

Question

How to clone a prodcution VM in azure?

Anonymous

I need to clone a windows server VM in azure. The clone will be used for testing purposes.

My questions are:
How do I sandbox the clone VM? I imagine that we can't have two VM's with the same hostname on the network?
How do I rename the clone VM without it affecting the production VM? The production VM is joined to our domain on Azure AD.

2 answers

Your answer

Answer 1

Andreas Baumgarten 123.4K MVP Volunteer Moderator

Hi @Anonymous ,

Create a snapshot of the machine, for example VM01.
Create a managed disk from the snapshot
Shutdown VM01
Create a new VM, for example VM01Clone and use the managed disk you created in step 2
If VM01Clone is running login and rename the computer to VM01Clone
If renaming is done you can start the VM01 again

----------

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

Regards
Andreas Baumgarten

Anonymous

2021-12-09T22:28:17.053+00:00

Hi @Andreas Baumgarten ,

Would renaming that VM unjoin my production VM? After all the clone VM reaching the my azure VM and it is a clone.
Praveen Prabhakaran 546 Reputation points Microsoft Employee

2021-12-10T04:13:18.277+00:00

@Anonymous

no renaming this new VM will not disturb the existing Prod VM. as long as you rename the cloned server you should not see any issue.
Fabrizio Mazzucchelli 0 Reputation points

2023-04-03T16:06:43.1733333+00:00

outdated infos ?!
i can't create VMS from the snap ...
Chase Griffin 0 Reputation points

2023-05-11T18:34:49.7366667+00:00

Question- if the vm being cloned is a DC, would this interfere in some way with domain services?
rpi_dwillis77 6 Reputation points

2023-08-08T01:17:20.54+00:00

I would think if the cloned VM is a domain member, the original would lose its trust/account (because when you boot the clone it will come online and talk to the domain and when you then rename it, you'll be renaming your computer account in AD, so when the original comes back online it won't have a computer account anymore). You'll probably have to rejoin the domain on the original, and could potentially run into other issues as well then (since it would be a new account, any group memberships or permissions associated w/ the old computer account would be lost, etc.).

A better way of going about it might be to boot the clone, leave the domain first, then rename and re-join the domain w/ the new name on the clone. That way, when you boot the original, although you'll still probably have lost the trust and need to re-join the domain, it should re-associate w/ the original machine account which means the account SID stays the same, as do any permissions/group memberships, etc.

Also I would not do this on a domain controller - you will more than likely run into issues with replication or other things when you try to bring the clone online and rename it and then try to bring the original online again. As a best practice, DCs should probably never be cloned.
Deleted

This comment has been deleted due to a violation of our Code of Conduct. The comment was manually reported or identified through automated detection before action was taken. Please refer to our Code of Conduct for more information.
Anonymous

2024-02-06T07:49:47.3366667+00:00

Hi Andreas Baumgarten
Can we access the VM01 again after the copy is created and running that is VM01 clone??

Answer 2

Chris Hemphill 16

In my case, this does not work for Linux systems, it creates the cloned disk as disk 2 data disk, not the OS disk, and it may be that I did not perform the steps properly. More detail would be nice for each step.

Share via

How to clone a prodcution VM in azure?

2 answers

Your answer