Forum Discussion

John Twohig's avatar
John Twohig
Iron Contributor
Feb 27, 2019

VHD to Archive Storage

I have a disk with some files (About 1 TB) that will probably never be needed. However they might be needed so I have to keep them somewhere. I thought that the archive storage tier would be the perf...
Data + Storage
davlun's avatar
davlun
Copper Contributor
May 01, 2019

John Twohig 

 

Did you ever figure out a solution for this?  (you are right, not the only one thinking about something like this)

 

David

 

CristianoRosa's avatar
CristianoRosa
Copper Contributor
Sep 26, 2019

davlun 

 

This is how I have implemented a similar scenario.

 

Scenario:

Copy vhd file from one subscription to another and in the destination subscription the vhd file must be placed in the archive tier.

 

Considerations:
- VHD file is supposed to be page blob.
- Archive tier is supported for block blobs (page blob cannot be changed to Archive tier) and at the object level only.  
- We want to Archive the vhd file in the destination subscription, so we have to copy the vhd file as block blob and then change the tier to Archive.
- However in case we ever need to restore the vhd file which was copied as block blob, we have to convert the vhd file back to page blob first and then mount it as a disk (because we cannot mount a vhd file block blob as a disk to a VM).

 

Steps:

 

1) First I have copied the vhd file from source subscription to destination subscription as block blob (parameter --blob-type=blockblob) with AzCopy v10.

 

azcopy copy "https://<source-storage-account-name>.blob.core.windows.net/<container-name>/<blob-path>?<source-storage-account-SAS-token>" "https://<destination-storage-account-name>.blob.core.windows.net/<container-name>/<blob-path>?<destination-storage-account-SAS-token>" --blob-type=blockblob
 
2) I configured the Lifecycle Management to automatically switch files in a given container to the Archive tier. Note that the policy only executes once per day. 

For details on how to manage the Azure Blob storage lifecycle check this:

https://nam06.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Furldefense.proofpoint.com%2Fv2%2Furl%3Fu%3Dhttps-3A__docs.microsoft.com_en-2Dus_azure_storage_blobs_storage-2Dlifecycle-2Dmanagement-2Dconcepts%26d%3DDwMFAg%26c%3DeIGjsITfXP_y-DLLX0uEHXJvU8nOHrUK8IrwNKOtkVU%26r%3DyxFqvV4vPK-LMxtxhaS7m0ZuFJNpKajTRwtmu_RWLY4%26m%3DN1AqBkCaW9oCFkG3hixSw4vCLBmRlvXdMhcFNNw9O30%26s%3D92xdOWrBP5H4_qo1q_AGUO-MQKH6DbfLy_2hxAhP1LA%26e%3D&data=02%7C01%7CCristiano.Araujo%40microsoft.com%7C9ca95a22de69494d22b308d740d2bc1e%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7C1%7C0%7C637049146170653072&sdata=m8NVVJibnOIqN8pYUh9XHMq9WNrFKSnhpIfTwaS3Gds%3D&reserved=0

 

3) In case we need to restore the vhd file which was copied as block blob, these are the steps:

- Change the tier from Archive to Hot for example.

- Convert the vhd file back to page blob with below command (parameter --blob-type=pageblob).

- Mount it as a disk to a VM.

 

azcopy copy "https://<source-storage-account-name>.blob.core.windows.net/<container-name>/<blob-path>?<source-storage-account-SAS-token>" "https://<destination-storage-account-name>.blob.core.windows.net/<container-name>/<blob-path>?<destination-storage-account-SAS-token>" --blob-type=pageblob

 

  • dgwbdlund's avatar
    dgwbdlund
    Copper Contributor
    Sep 27, 2019

    CristianoRosa 

     

    Thanks for the write up!  I could not find a solution originally, so went a more traditional backup, but will need to do this again toward the end of the year.  I am going to give this a shot in the next few weeks...