Moving a virtual machine (VM) between storage accounts sounds like an easy task, but can still be a bit complicated J In this blog post I will show how this can be done with AzCopy. AzCopy is a command-line utility designed for high-performance uploading, downloading, and copying data to and from Microsoft Azure Blob, File, and Table storage. Read more about AzCopy and download it here. When using AzCopy you need to know the key for your storage account. This key can be found in the Azure portal, both the preview portal and the classic portal.

When you are copying a VHD file for a VM you need to know the storage account URL and name of the VHD file. This can be found

• Classic Portal. Click Virtual Machines, click Disks and look at the Location column. The first part of the Location URL is the name of the storage account.
• Preview Portal. Click at a virtual machine, click All settings, click Disks, click on the disk and look at VHD location. The first part of the Location URL is the name of the storage account.
• If your target is a storage account in the v2, the preview portal, and you need to know the URL to the storage account, click the storage account, click All Settings, Access Keys and then look at the Connection String. In the connection string you will find BlobEndPoint, this is the URL to use as destination.

In this scenario I will move a VHD located at https://psws5770083082067456747.blob.core.windows.net/vhds/geekcloud-geekcloud-dc01-2013-11-22.vhd to a new storage account in v2, https://contosowelr001.blob.core.windows.net/

1. Start a Command Prompt
2. Go to the C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Azure\AzCopy folder
3. Run the following command to start the copy job. In the image I have covered the two keys, but I think you still get the command JAzCopy.exe /source:<The https:// URL to your storage account and container> /Dest:<The https:// URL to your destination storage account and container> /sourcekey:<The primary key for the source storage account> /destkey:<The primary key for the target storage account> /pattern:<file name>
4. Wait…
5. When the copy job is completed verify it was successfully

If you want to get the files you have in an Azure storage account, you can use PowerShell. In this example we first setup storage account context and then list files for each container in the storage account.

$blob_account  = New-AzureStorageContext -StorageAccountName contosowelr001 -StorageAccountKey xl6DMUmnbKvr -Protocol https
Get-AzureStorageContainer -Context $blob_account | ForEach-Object {
$container = $_.Name
get-azurestorageblob  -Container $container -Context $blob_account | Select Name
}

You can also see the files in the Azure portal, under the storage account/blobs/containers/