OS Disk Swap for Managed Virtual Machines now available

Today, we are excited to announce the availability of the OS Disk Swap capability for VMs using Managed Disks. Until now, this capability was only available for Unmanaged Disks.

With this capability, it becomes very easy to restore a previous backup of the OS Disk or swap out the OS Disk for VM troubleshooting without having to delete the VM. To leverage this capability, the VM needs to be in stop deallocated state. After the VM is stop deallocated, the resource ID of the existing Managed OS Disk can be replaced with the resource ID of the new Managed OS Disk. You will need to specify the name of the new disk to swap. Please note that you cannot switch the OS Type of the VM i.e. Switch an OS Disk with Linux for an OS Disk with Windows

Here are the instructions on how to leverage this capability:

Azure CLI

To read more about using Azure CLI, see Change the OS disk used by an Azure VM using the CLI.

For CLI, use the full resource ID of the new disk to the –osdisk parameter

NOTE: required Azure CLI version > 2.0.25

az vm update –g osrg -n vm2 --os-disk /subscriptions//resourceGroups/osrg/providers/Microsoft.Compute/disks/osbackup

Azure PowerShell

To read more about using PowerShell, see Change the OS disk used by an Azure VM using PowerShell.

$vm = Get-AzureRmVM -ResourceGroupName osrg -Name vm2 
$disk = Get-AzureRmDisk -ResourceGroupName osrg -Name osbackup 
Set-AzureRmVMOSDisk -VM $vm -ManagedDiskId $disk.Id -Name $disk.Name 
Update-AzureRmVM -ResourceGroupName osrg -VM $vm

Java SDK

VirtualMachine virtualMachine = azure.virtualMachines().getById("");

virtualMachine
    .inner()
    .storageProfile()
    .osDisk()
    .withName("")
    .managedDisk()
    .withId("");
    
virtualMachine.update()
    .apply();

GO SDK

func UpdateVM(ctx context.Context, vmName string, diskId string, diskName string) (vm compute.VirtualMachine, err error) {
    vm, err = GetVM(ctx, vmName)
    
    if err != nil {
        return
    }
    
    vm.VirtualMachineProperties.StorageProfile.OsDisk.Name = diskName
    vm.VirtualMachineProperties.StorageProfile.OsDisk.ManagedDisk.Id = diskId
    
    vmClient := getVMClient()
    
    future, err := vmClient.CreateOrUpdate(ctx, helpers.ResourceGroupName(), vmName, vm)
    
    if err != nil {
        return vm, fmt.Errorf("cannot update vm: %v", err)
    }
    
    err = future.WaitForCompletion(ctx, vmClient.Client)
    
    if err != nil {
        return vm, fmt.Errorf("cannot get the vm create or update future response: %v", err)
    }
    
    return future.Result(vmClient)
}