Attaching Disks to an Existing Azure Virtual Machine

When performing a restore from a backup of an Azure VM, you can choose to restore a VM disk and attach it to a different VM that already exists.

By attaching a disk to an existing VM, you can access or reuse the data on the disk without restoring the full source VM.

Considerations

• You can perform attach disk restores from all types of backups (streaming backups, IntelliSnap backups, and IntelliSnap backup copies), with both managed and unmanaged disks (but not unmanaged disks from IntelliSnap backups).

• You cannot perform attach disk restores from encrypted VM disks.

• You cannot attach a disk to a VM if the target VM is configured with the managed storage account for boot diagnostics. Instead of using the managed storage account for boot diagnostics, use a custom storage account, and then attach the disk to the VM.

• Restoring/attaching an OS disk is not supported.

• For Azure Classic: When performing a restore from a backup of an Azure VM, you cannot restore a VM disk and attach it to multiple VMs that are part of the same Cloud Service group.

Procedure

1. From the CommCell Browser, expand Client Computers > virtualization_client > Virtual Server > instance > backup_set.

2. Initiate the restore from a subclient or backup set:

   • From a subclient: Right-click the subclient and select Browse and Restore.

   • From a backup set: Right-click the backup set, point to All Tasks, and click Browse and Restore.

3. In the Browse and Restore Options dialog box, select Attach Disk to Existing VM and click View Content.

4. From the list of backed up virtual machines in the Client tab, expand a virtual machine, select a disk to be restored, and click Recover All Selected.

   The Restore Options for All Selected Items dialog box appears.

5. Provide the following information:

   • Azure Subscription: To restore to a different Azure subscription, select the client for the Azure subscription from this list.

   • Proxy Client: To use a different proxy for the restore, select the proxy from this list.

   • VM and Disk: This column shows information for the source VM. You can expand a VM to display disks.

   • Restore to Existing VM: In this column, click in the row for the VM, and then click ... to browse and select the VM to which the disk should be attached.

   • Change Disk name to: In this column, click in the row for the disk, and the enter the new name for the disk.

     If you do not enter disk names, unique disk names are created automatically including a time stamp.

   • Storage Account: Select the storage account for the restored disk.

6. Click OK to submit the restore job.