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Labs

Snapshot an Azure VM Disk using PowerShell

Your company has a legal requirement to keep all backups for a period of time to ensure data can be restored if needed. Your manager has asked you to take a snapshot of a disk in Azure, and make sure that you can access it. Use PowerShell to take a snapshot of the VM disk and send it to a storage account.

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Lab platform
Lab Info
Level
Beginner
Last updated
Sep 23, 2025
Duration
45m

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Table of Contents
  1. Challenge

    Stop the Virtual Machine
    1. Use the correct PowerShell command to stop and deallocate the VM that's provisioned with this lab.

    2. In the Azure Portal, click All resources and copy the name of the pre-provisioned resource group.

    3. In the Cloud Shell, create a new variable:

      $rg = "<RESOURCE_GROUP_NAME>"
      
    4. In the Azure Portal, copy the name of the VM disk and create a new variable:

      $diskname = "<VIRTUAL_MACHINE_DISK_NAME>"
      
    5. Create a variable for sasExpiryDuration:

      $sasExpiryDuration = "3600"
      
    6. In the Azure Portal, copy the storage account name, and create a new variable:

      $storageAccountName = "<STORAGE_ACCOUNT_NAME>"
      
    7. In the Azure Portal, copy the storage account key for key1, and create a new variable:

      $storageAccountKey = "<KEY1_STORAGE_ACCOUNT_KEY>"
      
    8. Create additional variables:

      $storageContainerName = "container1"
      $destinationVHDFileName = "disk1.vhd"
      $useAzCopy = 1
      $vmName = "winVM"
      
    9. Stop the VM:

      Stop-AzVM -ResourceGroupName $rg -Name $vmName
      
  2. Challenge

    Take a Snapshot of the VM
    1. Use the appropriate commands to take a snapshot of the VM.
      1. Once the VM has stopped, grant access to the disk:
      $sas = Grant-AzDiskAccess -ResourceGroupName $rg -DiskName $diskName -DurationInSecond $sasExpiryDuration -Access Read
      
    2. Create an Azure Storage context:
      $destinationContext = New-AzStorageContext -StorageAccountName $storageAccountName -StorageAccountKey $storageAccountKey
      
  3. Challenge

    Copy the Snapshot to Container
    1. Using AzCopy, send the snapshot to the container1 within the storage account provisioned with this lab.
      1. Using AzCopy, send the snapshot to container1:
      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
      }
      
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