Restore a disk and create a recovered VM in Azure – Support Latam

Azure Backup creates recovery points that are stored in geo-redundant recovery vaults. When you restore from a recovery point, you can restore the whole VM or individual files. This article explains how to restore a complete VM using CLI. In this tutorial you learn how to:

List and select recovery points
Restore a disk from a recovery point
Create a VM from the restored disk

For information on using PowerShell to restore a disk and create a recovered VM, see Back up and restore Azure VMs with PowerShell.

Open Azure Cloud Shell

Azure Cloud Shell is a free, interactive shell that you can use to run the steps in this article. Common Azure tools are preinstalled and configured in Cloud Shell for you to use with your account. Just select the Copy button to copy the code, paste it in Cloud Shell, and then press Enter to run it. There are a few ways to open Cloud Shell:


Select Try Itin the upper-right corner of a code block.
Open Cloud Shell in your browser.
Select the Cloud Shellbutton on the menu in the upper-right corner of the Azure portal.

If you choose to install and use the CLI locally, this tutorial requires that you are running the Azure CLI version 2.0.18 or later. Run az --version to find the version. If you need to install or upgrade, see Install Azure CLI 2.0.

Prerequisites

This tutorial requires a Linux VM that has been protected with Azure Backup. To simulate an accidental VM deletion and recovery process, you create a VM from a disk in a recovery point. If you need a Linux VM that has been protected with Azure Backup, see Back up a virtual machine in Azure with the CLI.

Backup overview

When Azure initiates a backup, the backup extension on the VM takes a point-in-time snapshot. The backup extension is installed on the VM when the first backup is requested. Azure Backup can also take a snapshot of the underlying storage if the VM is not running when the backup takes place.

By default, Azure Backup takes a file system consistent backup. Once Azure Backup takes the snapshot, the data is transferred to the Recovery Services vault. To maximize efficiency, Azure Backup identifies and transfers only the blocks of data that have changed since the previous backup.

When the data transfer is complete, the snapshot is removed and a recovery point is created.

List available recovery points

To restore a disk, you select a recovery point as the source for the recovery data. As the default policy creates a recovery point each day and retains them for 30 days, you can keep a set of recovery points that allows you to select a particular point in time for recovery.

To see a list of available recovery points, use az backup recoverypoint list. The recovery point name is used to recover disks. In this tutorial, we want the most recent recovery point available. The --query [0].name parameter selects the most recent recovery point name as follows:

az backup recoverypoint list \
    --resource-group myResourceGroup \
    --vault-name myRecoveryServicesVault \
    --container-name myVM \
    --item-name myVM \
    --query [0].name \
    --output tsv

Restore a VM disk

To restore your disk from the recovery point, you first create an Azure storage account. This storage account is used to store the restored disk. In additional steps, the restored disk is used to create a VM.

To create a storage account, use az storage account create. The storage account name must be all lowercase, and be globally unique. Replace mystorageaccount with your own unique name:
```
az storage account create \
    --resource-group myResourceGroup \
    --name mystorageaccount \
    --sku Standard_LRS
```
Restore the disk from your recovery point with az backup restore restore-disks. Replace mystorageaccount with the name of the storage account you created in the preceding command. Replace myRecoveryPointName with the recovery point name you obtained in the output from the previous az backup recoverypoint list command:
```
az backup restore restore-disks \
    --resource-group myResourceGroup \
    --vault-name myRecoveryServicesVault \
    --container-name myVM \
    --item-name myVM \
    --storage-account mystorageaccount \
    --rp-name myRecoveryPointName
```

Monitor the restore job

To monitor the status of restore job, use az backup job list:

az backup job list \
    --resource-group myResourceGroup \
    --vault-name myRecoveryServicesVault \
    --output table

The output is similar to the following example, which shows the restore job is InProgress:

Copy

Name      Operation        Status      Item Name    Start Time UTC       Duration
--------  ---------------  ----------  -----------  -------------------  --------------
7f2ad916  Restore          InProgress  myvm         2017-09-19T19:39:52  0:00:34.520850
a0a8e5e6  Backup           Completed   myvm         2017-09-19T03:09:21  0:15:26.155212
fe5d0414  ConfigureBackup  Completed   myvm         2017-09-19T03:03:57  0:00:31.191807

When the Status of the restore job reports Completed, the disk has been restored to the storage account.

Convert the restored disk to a Managed Disk

The restore job creates an unmanaged disk. In order to create a VM from the disk, it must first be converted to a managed disk.

Obtain the connection information for your storage account with az storage account show-connection-string. Replace mystorageaccount with the name of your storage account as follows:

export AZURE_STORAGE_CONNECTION_STRING=$( az storage account show-connection-string \
    --resource-group myResourceGroup \
    --output tsv \
    --name mystorageaccount )

Your unmanaged disk is secured in the storage account. The following commands get information about your unmanaged disk and create a variable named uri that is used in the next step when you create the Managed Disk.

container=$(az storage container list --query [0].name -o tsv)
blob=$(az storage blob list --container-name $container --query [0].name -o tsv)
uri=$(az storage blob url --container-name $container --name $blob -o tsv)

Now you can create a Managed Disk from your recovered disk with az disk create. The uri variable from the preceding step is used as the source for your Managed Disk.
```
az disk create \
    --resource-group myResourceGroup \
    --name myRestoredDisk \
    --source $uri
```
As you now have a Managed Disk from your restored disk, clean up the unmanaged disk and storage account with az storage account delete. Replace mystorageaccount with the name of your storage account as follows:
```
az storage account delete \
    --resource-group myResourceGroup \
    --name mystorageaccount
```

Create a VM from the restored disk

The final step is to create a VM from the Managed Disk.

Create a VM from your Managed Disk with az vm create as follows:

az vm create \
    --resource-group myResourceGroup \
    --name myRestoredVM \
    --attach-os-disk myRestoredDisk \
    --os-type linux

To confirm that your VM has been created from your recovered disk, list the VMs in your resource group with az vm list as follows:
```
az vm list --resource-group myResourceGroup --output table
```

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