Export/Copy the VHD of a managed disk to a storage account in different region with PowerShell (Windows)

This script exports the VHD of a managed disk to a storage account in different region. It first generates the SAS URI of the managed disk and then uses it to copy the underlying VHD to a storage account in different region. Use this script to copy managed disks to another region for regional expansion.

If needed, install the Azure PowerShell module using the instructions found in the Azure PowerShell guide, and then run Connect-AzAccount to create a connection with Azure. Also, you need to have an SSH public key named id_rsa.pub in the .ssh directory of your user profile.

If you don't have an Azure subscription, create an Azure free account before you begin.

Sample script

#Provide the subscription Id of the subscription where managed disk is created
$subscriptionId = "yourSubscriptionId"

#Provide the name of your resource group where managed is created
$resourceGroupName ="yourResourceGroupName"

#Provide the managed disk name 
$diskName = "yourDiskName"

#Provide Shared Access Signature (SAS) expiry duration in seconds e.g. 3600.
#Know more about SAS here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/Az.Storage/storage-dotnet-shared-access-signature-part-1
$sasExpiryDuration = "3600"

#Provide storage account name where you want to copy the underlying VHD of the managed disk. 
$storageAccountName = "yourstorageaccountName"

#Name of the storage container where the downloaded VHD will be stored
$storageContainerName = "yourstoragecontainername"

#Provide the key of the storage account where you want to copy the VHD of the managed disk. 
$storageAccountKey = 'yourStorageAccountKey'

#Provide the name of the destination VHD file to which the VHD of the managed disk will be copied.
$destinationVHDFileName = "yourvhdfilename"

#Set the value to 1 to use AzCopy tool to download the data. This is the recommended option for faster copy.
#Download AzCopy v10 from the link here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/storage/common/storage-use-azcopy-v10
#Ensure that AzCopy is downloaded in the same folder as this file
#If you set the value to 0 then Start-AzStorageBlobCopy will be used. Azure storage will asynchronously copy the data. 
$useAzCopy = 1 

# Set the context to the subscription Id where managed disk is created
Select-AzSubscription -SubscriptionId $SubscriptionId

#Generate the SAS for the managed disk 
$sas = Grant-AzDiskAccess -ResourceGroupName $ResourceGroupName -DiskName $diskName -DurationInSecond $sasExpiryDuration -Access Read 

#Create the context of the storage account where the underlying VHD of the managed disk will be copied
$destinationContext = New-AzStorageContext -StorageAccountName $storageAccountName -StorageAccountKey $storageAccountKey

#Copy the VHD of the managed disk to the storage account
if($useAzCopy -eq 1)
{
    $containerSASURI = New-AzStorageContainerSASToken -Context $destinationContext -ExpiryTime(get-date).AddSeconds($sasExpiryDuration) -FullUri -Name $storageContainerName -Permission rw
    azcopy copy $sas.AccessSAS $containerSASURI

}else{

    Start-AzStorageBlobCopy -AbsoluteUri $sas.AccessSAS -DestContainer $storageContainerName -DestContext $destinationContext -DestBlob $destinationVHDFileName
}

Script explanation

This script uses the following commands to generate SAS URI of a managed disk and copies the underlying VHD to a storage account using the SAS URI. Each command in the table links to the command specific documentation.

Command	Notes
Grant-AzDiskAccess	Generates SAS URI for a managed disk that is used to copy the underlying VHD to a storage account.
New-AzureStorageContext	Creates a storage account context using the account name and key. This context can be used to perform read/write operations on the storage account.
Start-AzureStorageBlobCopy	Copies the underlying VHD of a snapshot to a storage account

Next steps

Create a managed disk from a VHD

Create a virtual machine from a managed disk

For more information on the Azure PowerShell module, see Azure PowerShell documentation.

Additional virtual machine PowerShell script samples can be found in the Azure Windows VM documentation.