How to copy files between Azure subscription from Windows, Linux, OS X, or the cloud

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(en français: ici)

Copy, Download or Upload from-to any combination of Windows, Linux, OS X, or the cloud


Data is and will always be our primary concern. Whether shaped as text files, images, VM VHDs or any other ways, at some point in time, our data will need to be moved. I already wrote about it previously, and the content of this post is still valuable today, but I wanted to share new options and convert all ground (meaning Linux, Windows and OS X).

Scenarios


Here few scenarios why you would want to move data.
  • Your Microsoft Azure trial is ending, and you wish to keep all the data.
  • You are creating a new web application, and all those images need to be moved to the Azure subscription.
  • You have a Virtual Machine that you would like to move to the cloud or to a different subscription.
  • ...

AZCopy


AzCopy is a fantastic command-line tool for copying data to and from Microsoft Azure Blob, File, and Table storage. At the moment, to write this post AzCopy is only available for Windows users. Another solution will be introduced later in this post for Mac and Linux users. Before AzCopy was only available on Windows. However, recently a second version built with .NET Core Framework is available. The commands are very similar but not exactly the same.

AzCopy on Windows


In his simplest expression, an AzCopy command looks like this:
AzCopy /Source:<source> /Dest:<destination> [Options]
If you earlier have installed an Azure SDK on your machine, you already have it. By default, AzCopy is installed to %ProgramFiles(x86)%\Microsoft SDKs\Azure\AzCopy (64-bit Windows) or %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft SDKs\Azure\AzCopy (32-bit Windows).

If you need only AzCopy for a server, you can download the latest version of AzCopy.
Let's see some frequent usage. First let's say you need do move all those images from your server to an Azure blob storage.
AzCopy /Source:C:\MyWebApp\images /Dest:https://frankysnotes.blob.core.windows.net/blog /DestKey:4YvvYDTg3UUpky8Rj5bDG4KO/R1FdtssxVnunsEd/4rAS04V2LkO0F8mXbddAv39WtCo5LW6JyvfhA== /S
CopyAllImages

Then to copy those images to another subscription very easy.
AzCopy /Source:https://frankysnotes.blob.core.windows.net/blog /Dest:https://frankshare.blob.core.windows.net/imagesbackup /SourceKey:4YvvYDTg3UUpky8Rj5bDG4KO/R1FdtssxVnunsEd/4rAS04V2LkO0F8mXbddAv39WtCo5LW6JyvfhA== /DestKey:EwXpZ2uZ3zrjEbpBGDfsefWkj3G2QY5fJcb6kMqV2A0+2TsGno+mk9vEXc5Uw1XiouvAiTS7Kr5OGzA== /S

AzCopy Parameters


These examples were simple, but AzCopy is a very powerful tool. I invite you to type one of the following commands to discover more about using AzCopy:
  • For detailed command-line help for AzCopy: AzCopy /?
  • For command-line examples: AzCopy /?:Samples

AzCopy on Linux


Before you could install AzCopy you will need to install .Net Core. This is done very simply with few commands.
curl https://packages.microsoft.com/keys/microsoft.asc | gpg --dearmor > microsoft.gpg
sudo mv microsoft.gpg /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/microsoft.gpg
sudo sh -c 'echo "deb [arch=amd64] https://packages.microsoft.com/repos/microsoft-ubuntu-xenial-prod xenial main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/dotnetdev.list'
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install dotnet-sdk-2.0.2
Then to install it, you just need to get it with a wget command, unzip it, and execute the install script.
wget -O azcopy.tar.gz https://aka.ms/downloadazcopyprlinux 
tar -xf azcopy.tar.gz 
sudo ./install.sh
In his simplest expression, the .Net Core version of AzCopy command looks like this:
azcopy --source <source> --destination <destination> [Options]
It is very similar to the original version, but parameters are using -- and - instead of the / and where a : was required, it's now a simple space.

Uploading to Azure


Here an example, to copy a single file GlobalDevopsBootcamp.jpg to an Azure Blob Storage. We pass the full local path to the file into --source, the destination is the full URI, and finally the destination blob storage key. Of course, you could also use SAS token if you prefer.
azcopy \
--source /home/frank/demo/GlobalDevopsBootcamp.jpg \
--destination https://frankysnotes.blob.core.windows.net/blog/GlobalDevopsBootcamp.jpg \
--dest-key 4YvvYDTg3UUpky8Rj5bDG4KO/R1FdtssxVnunsEd/4rAS04V2LkO0F8mXbddAv39WtCo5LW6JyvfhA==

Copying Between Azure Subscriptions


To copy the image to a second Azure subscription, we use the command the source is now an Azure Storage URI, and we pass the source and the destination keys:
azcopy \
--source https://frankysnotes.blob.core.windows.net/blog/GlobalDevopsBootcamp.jpg \
--destination https://frankshare.blob.core.windows.net/imagesbackup/GlobalDevopsBootcamp.jpg \
--source-key 4YvvYDTg3UUpky8Rj5bDG4KO/R1FdtssxVnunsEd/4rAS04V2LkO0F8mXbddAv39WtCo5LW6JyvfhA== \
--dest-key EwXpZ2uZ3zrjEbpBGDfsefWkj3G2QY5fJcb6kMqV2A0+2TsGno+mk9vEXc5Uw1XiouvAiTS7Kr5OGzA==

Azure CLI


Azure CLI is a set of cross-platform commands for the Azure Platform. It gives tools to manipulate all Azure components, but this post will focus on azure storage features.

There are two versions of the Azure Command-Line Interface (CLI) currently available:

  • Azure CLI 2.0: written in Python, conpatible only with the Resource Manager deployment model.
  • Azure CLI 1.0: written in Node.js, compatible with both the classic and Resource Manager deployment models.

Azure CLI 1.0 is deprecated and should only be used for support with the Azure Service Management (ASM) model with "classic" resources.

Installing Azure CLI


Let's start by installing Azure CLI. Of course, you can download an installer but since everything is evolving very fast with not getting it from Node Package Manager (npm). The install will be the same, you just need to specify the version if you absolutely need Azure CLI 1.0.

sudo npm install azure-cli -g

AzureCli_installed

To keep the previous scenario, let's try to copy all images to a blob storage. Unfortunately, Azure CLI doesn't offer the same flexibility as AzCopy,and you must upload the file one by one. However, to upload all images from a folder, we can easily put the command in a loop.

for f in Documents/images/*.jpg
do
   azure storage blob upload -a frankysnotes -k YoMjXMDe+694FGgOaN0oaRdOF6s1ktMgkB6pBx2vnAr8AOXm3HTF7tT0NQWvGrWnWj5m4X1U0HIPUIAA==  $f blogimages
done

azurecli_allimages

In the previous command -a was the account name, and -k was the Access key. This two information can easily be found in the Azure portal. From the portal (https://portal.azure.com), select the storage account. In the right band click-on Access keys.

StorageAccessKeys

To copy a file (ex: a VM disk aka VHD) from one storage to another one in a different subscription or region, it's really easy. This time we will use the command azure storage blob copy start and the -a and -k are related to our destination.

azure storage blob copy start 'https://frankysnotes.blob.core.windows.net/blogimages/20151011_151451.MOV' imagesbackup -k EwXpZ2uZ3zrjEbpBGDfsefWkj3GnuFdPCt2QY5fJcb6kMqV2A0+2TsGno+mk9vEXc5Uw1XiouvAiTS7Kr5OGzA== -a frankshare

The nice thing about this command is that it's asynchronous. To see the status of your copy just execute the command azure storage blob copy show

azure storage blob copy show -a frankshare -k YoMjXMDe+694FGgOaN0oPaRdOF6s1ktMgkB6pBx2vnAr8AOXm3HTF7tT0NQVxsqhWvGrWnWj5m4X1U0HIPUIAA== imagesbackup 20151011_151451.MOV

CopyStatus1


CopyStatus2

Azure CLI 2.0 (Windows, Linux, OS X, Docker, Cloud Shell)


The Azure CLI 2.0 is Azure's new command-line optimized for managing and administering Azure resources that work against the Azure Resource Manager. Like the previous version, it will work perfectly on Windows, Linux, OS X, Docker but also from the Cloud Shell!


Cloud Shell is available right from the Azure Portal, without any plugging.

Uploading to Azure


The command if the same as the previous version except that now the command is named az. Here an example to upload a single file into an Azure Blob Storage.

az storage blob upload --file /home/frank/demo/CloudIsStrong.jpg \
--account-name frankysnotes \
--container-name blogimages --name CloudIsStrong.jpg \
--account-key 4YvvYDTg3UUpky8Rj5bDG4KO/R1FdtssxVnunsEd/4rAS04V2LkO0F8mXbddAv39WtCo5LW6JyvfhA==

Copying Between Subscriptions


Let's now copy the file to another Azure subscription. A think to be aware is that --account-name and --account-key are for the destination, even if it's not specified.
az storage blob copy start \
--source-account-name frankysnotes  --source-account-key 4YvvYDTg3UUpky8Rj5bDG4KO/R1FdtssxVnunsEd/4rAS04V2LkO0F8mXbddAv39WtCo5LW6JyvfhA== \
--source-container blogimages --source-blob CloudIsStrong.jpg   \
--account-name frankshare  --account-key EwXpZ2uZ3zrjEbpBGDfsefWkj3G2QY5fJcb6kMqV2A0+2TsGno+mk9vEXc5Uw1XiouvAiTS7Kr5OGzA== \
--destination-container imagesbackup  \
--destination-blob CloudIsStrong.jpg

In Video Please!


If you prefer, I also have a video version of that post.



One More Thing


Sometimes, we don't need to script things, and a graphic interface is much better. For this kind of situation, the must is the Azure Storage Explorer. It does a lot! Upload, download, and manage blobs, files, queues, tables, and Cosmos DB entities. And it works on Windows, macOS, and Linux!


It's just the beginning


This post was just an introduction to two very powerful tools. I strongly suggest to go read in the official documentation to learn more. Use the comment to share all your questions and suggestion.

References:

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Unfu*k Yourself: Get Out of Your Head and Into Your Life (Gary John Bishop)

I really enjoyed this book. Strong ideas. No repetition. It goes straight to the point. The narration is awesome.

ASIN: B0731QJ482














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When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing (Daniel H. Pink)

A really amazing book packed of very interesting advice. Things that you kind of already knew, or at least had a feeling you maybe knew are clearly explained to you.

After reading (or listening) this book, you will know why, and you can decide to fight it or change the when... improve your performance and use your time and energy on something else.

ISBN: 0525589333






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    Making Time () - I really enjoyed reading that book. I've been watching Bob's YouTube Channel for a while. ANd was happy to ear about his new book. In Making Time, a little bit like in his videos, Bob explains how he build stuff... but this time instead of a furniture or a room, it's a new career/ business. A short book (88 pages) but a lot of fun.  


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Last week, it was the 25 edition of the MVP Summit. An event, where Microsoft invites all his MVP to get to Seattle and spend some time with the products teams and learn on the latest news and best practices.

This year was particularly inspiriting by the Microsoft roadmap, of course,  but even more by all the amazing people a got the chance to meet and discuss with. I'm all pump-up, and I have tons of ideas and projects… more to come.

I already miss you…

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  • The Modern Dev Team (Rob Conery) - What a great post. Maybe it's only me getting old ;) but I think we all have these thoughts one day or the other.

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How to save huge money by shutting down your VM automatically

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Updated on 2018-03-14

Virtual machines (VM) are used in most solutions nowadays as a [ProcessName] server, temporary machine to run tests or make demos, and sometimes even as a development machine. One of the great benefits of the cloud is that you only pay for what you use. So unlike the old server, that you keep paying for, you won pay virtual machine's CPU for when you turned off! In this post, I explain how to do it with your existing machines and also what to do with all the future one that you will be creating.

(Ce billet en aussi disponible en français.)

Already have a VM up and running, here what to do


From the Azure portal (portal.azure.com), select the Virtual Machine (VM) that you which to edit. Then look at the option panel, on the left, for Auto-Shutdown in the Operations section. You should have something that looks like this:

auto-shutdown

At any time you can enable and disable that functionality, it won’t affect the running VM.

Now, to activate it click on the Enabled. Then Select the time you would like to see the VM shutdown. Be sure to select the good time zone, by default it’s UTC. You can adjust the at for UTC of change the time zone, both options are valid.

Now you could decide to enable the notification. That could be useful if you may want to postpone the shutdown for one or two hours, or integrate the shutdown to another process like backup, cleaning…

To activate the notification option just click on the enabled, and enter the email address. If you want to attach the shutdown to a Logic App or an Azure Functions use the webhook. Here an example of notification email, see the Postpone options link.

emailsample

What if you have many VMs running


Let's say you have already twenty (or more) VMs running, you could have executed a PowerShell script like:


$myMVsName = @("franDev1", "frankBuildserver", "demo_sales2018")

For ($i=0; $i -lt $myMVsName.Length; $i++) {     
    Set-AzureRmDtlAutoShutdownPolicy $myMVsName[$i]
    [...]
}

Update - 2018-03-14
Well, today this is only possible for VM part of a DevTest Labs. Not for "regular" VM. However, I'm sure that day will come pretty quick.Does that mean that you need to go in all your VMs and set it manually? No. You can use an Azure Automation that will stop a list of VM on a regular schedule. A big advantage of this solution is that you can be more creative since it offers a lot more flexibility. You could identify the VM to shutdown base on some TAGS, you could have a different schedule base on the week vs weekend. You could even have a task to start VMs in the morning... More to come on that topic in a future post... If you want to read about how to get started to Azure Automation click here.

Multiple VMs that already exist, no problem

Obviously, if you have multiple virtual machines that already exist it is not very efficient to change their configuration one by one via the portal. Here is a small script to change the configuration of a large amount of VM in one shot.


    '# Login-AzureRmAccount

    $Subscription = Get-AzureRmSubscription -SubscriptionName 'YOUR_SUBSCRIPTION_NAME'
    Select-AzureRmSubscription -Subscription $Subscription.Id

    $selectedVMs = Get-Azurermvm -ResourceGroupName cloud5mins
    foreach($vm in $selectedVMs) 
    { 
        $ResourceGroup = $vm.ResourceGroupName
        $vmName = $vm.Name
        $ScheduledShutdownResourceId = "/subscriptions/$Subscription/resourceGroups/$ResourceGroup/providers/microsoft.devtestlab/schedules/shutdown-computevm-$vmName"
    
        $Properties = @{}
        $Properties.Add('status', 'Enabled')
        $Properties.Add('targetResourceId', $vm.Id)
        $Properties.Add('taskType', 'ComputeVmShutdownTask')
        $Properties.Add('dailyRecurrence', @{'time'= 2100})
        $Properties.Add('timeZoneId', 'Eastern Standard Time')
        $Properties.Add('notificationSettings', @{status='Disabled'; timeInMinutes=60})

        New-AzureRmResource -Location $vm.Location -ResourceId $ScheduledShutdownResourceId -Properties $Properties -Force
    }

The variable $selectedVMs contains all the VMS that we wish to edit. In this sample, I only get VMs contained in the RessourceGroup cloud5mins, but there are no limits to what you can do. You could select all VMs with a specific OS, tags, location, name, etc.

The variable $ScheduledShutdownResourceId will be the identity for the configuration for the auto-shutdown we wish to inject. Note that the provider is microsoft.devtestlab.

Next, we create a collection of properties in $Properties. status the one that active or deactivate the auto-shutdonw. targetResourceId is the resourceID of the VM we target.

The only things left is to specify the time and timezone.

If you prefer, I also have a video version that explains all the steps.

How to shutdown automatically all your existing VMs



End Update

Let's create a VM with the auto-shutdown pre-configured with ARM


Of course, a much more efficient way to set the auto-shutdown is at the creation time by adding a new resource of type Microsoft.DevTestLab/schedules to your template. This option was previously only accessible for DevTestLab, but recently was made available to any VMs.
Here an example of the variables that could be added to your template.

"variables": {

    "ShutdowTime": "21:00",
    "TimeZone": "UTC",
    "emailRecipient": "frank@frankysnotes.com",
    "notificationLocale": "en",
    "timeInMinutes": 30
}

And here an example of Microsoft.DevTestLab/schedules resource. One of these should be added for every VM you wish to auto-shutdown. Because your script is for one server, however, only one instance is required.

{
    "name": "[concat('autoshutdown-', variables('vmName'))]",
    "type": "Microsoft.DevTestLab/schedules",
    "apiVersion": "2017-04-26-preview",
    "location": "[resourceGroup().location]",
    "properties": {
        "status": "Enabled",
        "taskType": "ComputeVmShutdownTask",
        "dailyRecurrence": {
            "time": "[variables('ShutdowTime')]"
        },
        "timeZoneId": "[variables('TimeZone')]",
        "targetResourceId": "[resourceId('Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachines', variables('vmName'))]",
        "notificationSettings": {
            "status": "Enabled",
            "emailRecipient": "[variables('emailRecipient')]",
            "notificationLocale": "[variables('notificationLocale')]",
            "timeInMinutes": "[variables('timeInMinutes')]"
        }
    },
    "dependsOn": [
        "[concat('Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachines/', variables('vmName'))]"
    ]
}

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