Microsoft Azure: The ways to upload VHDs to Azure : AZcopy

Hi All,

This week is all about the ways to upload VHDs to Azure. And guess what, I’m not done yet. Everyday, I’m discovering something new. Remember my blog about the Azure Powershell command Add-AzureVHD that permits to upload VHDs to Azure. It’s a powerful command that enable you to do scripting and automation. But we saw some drawbacks with it like the MD5 hash calculation that can take considerable time, and that we can’t skip. However, I don’t know why I never used AZcopy. I used AZcopy before to copy VHDs between two storage accounts, but I forgot that it permits uploading files (VHDs) from On-premise to Azure.

AZCopy is a tool (utility) that give you many options like copying files between Azure storage accounts and subscriptions, copying files from on-premise to Azure, make batch copies… The good news is that the MD5 hash calculation is optional (Not by default). Use it if your read disk throughput is low and if you don’t afford waiting.

Keep in mind that Azcopy does not convert Dynamic VHDs to Fixed VHDs during upload. You need to upload fixed type VHDs

Download AZCopy here

Look for this Microsoft article describing the AZCopy options

Look here for this step by step blog