When talking to customers about trying out Azure, one sticking point that we often hear is that rebuilding their workflow (again) in a different cloud is painful. One of the pain points is regarding their VMs - it takes alot of time and energy to build a new image so even getting started with their apps, scripts, etc is just... hard....
In an effort to make the transition from Google GCE to Microsoft Azure easier, we thought it made some sense to document how one might do that. It's pretty straight-forward and only takes about an hour once you know what to do (and most of that is wait time on the downloading/converting/uploading steps).
You'll notice that this is Debian/Ubuntu specific so, if you're using Centos, just substitute "yum" for "apt-get".
This page gives you just about all you need to prepare the image for Azure: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/linux/create-upload-ubuntu
Important - you should follow the steps on the link above, the immediate steps below on initially preparing the image are what we did at the time and are here for convenience and reference. The link above will be updated with any new changes/requirements:
# sudo apt-get update
# sudo apt-get install linux-generic-hwe-16.04 linux-cloud-tools-generic-hwe-16.04
# sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
# sudo reboot
Modify Grub file:
vi /etc/default/grub
Edit the following:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="console=tty1 console=ttyS0,115200n8 earlyprintk=ttyS0,115200 rootdelay=300"
Update Grub:
sudo update-grub
Install Azure Linux Agent:
# sudo apt-get update
# sudo apt-get install walinuxagent
Create Linux Agent Azure config file
/etc/cloud/cloud.cfg.d/90-azure.cfg
Contents should look like this:
datasource:
Azure:
agent_command: [service, walinuxagent, start]
Deprovision the VM:
# sudo waagent -force -deprovision
# export HISTSIZE=0
# logout
A GCE image, of course, also comes loaded with a bunch of GCE-related goodies that should probably be removed.
SSHGuard caused some trouble so we removed that:
sudo apt-get remove --purge sshguard
Removing these files helped to clean up and quiet-down the logs:
cd /
rm etc/apt/apt.conf.d/01autoremove-gce
rm etc/apt/apt.conf.d/99-gce-ipv4-only
rm etc/cloud/cloud.cfg.d/91-gce.cfg
rm etc/cloud/cloud.cfg.d/91-gce-system.cfg
rm etc/apt/apt.conf.d/99ipv4-only
rm etc/modprobe.d/gce-blacklist.conf
rm etc/rsyslog.d/90-google.conf
rm etc/sysctl.d/11-gce-network-security.conf
rm etc/sysctl.d/99-gce.conf
rm lib/systemd/system-preset/90-google-compute-engine.preset
rm lib/systemd/system/google-accounts-daemon.service
rm lib/systemd/system/google-clock-skew-daemon.service
rm lib/systemd/system/google-network-daemon.service
rm lib/systemd/system/google-instance-setup.service
rm lib/systemd/system/google-shutdown-scripts.service
rm lib/systemd/system/google-startup-scripts.service
rm lib/udev/rules.d/64-gce-disk-removal.rules
rm lib/udev/rules.d/65-gce-disk-naming.rules
rm lib/udev/rules.d/99-gce.rules
rm usr/bin/google_accounts_daemon
rm usr/bin/google_clock_skew_daemon
rm usr/bin/google_instance_setup
rm usr/bin/google_metadata_script_runner
rm usr/bin/google_network_daemon
rm usr/bin/google_optimize_local_ssd
rm usr/bin/google_set_multiqueue
rm usr/share/doc/gce-compute-image-packages/TODO.Debian
rm usr/share/doc/gce-compute-image-packages/changelog.Debian.gz
rm usr/share/doc/gce-compute-image-packages/copyright
rm usr/share/lintian/overrides/gce-compute-image-packages
You will want to disable cloudinit and let waagent do the provisioning from the waagent config file:
vi /etc/waagent
Make these changes (the firewall was disabled to simplify the installation and is not required):
# Enable instance creation
Provisioning.Enabled=y
...
# Rely on cloud-init to provision
Provisioning.UseCloudInit=n
...
# Add firewall rules to protect access to Azure host node services
OS.EnableFirewall=n
Stop the VM
Login to the GCE console:
$ gcloud auth login
List disks in project:
$ gcloud compute disks list
NAME LOCATION LOCATION_SCOPE SIZE_GB TYPE STATUS
testimage-ubuntu-2 us-east4-c zone 10 pd-standard READY
ubuntu-demo us-east4-c zone 10 pd-standard READY
Create image in GCE (https://cloud.google.com/sdk/gcloud/reference/beta/compute/images/create)
$ gcloud compute images create ubuntu-demo-image --source-disk=ubuntu-demo --source-disk-zone=us-east4-c
We needed an easy way to get the image into Azure so made it publicly accessible by putting it into a public bucket and exporting the image into that bucket.
Make bucket publicly accessible (https://cloud.google.com/storage/docs/access-control/making-data-public)
$ gsutil iam ch allUsers:objectViewer gs://mybucket-public/
Export image in GCE (https://cloud.google.com/sdk/gcloud/reference/beta/compute/images/export)
$ gcloud compute images export --destination-uri=gs://mybucket-public/ubuntu-demo-image.vhdx --image=ubuntu-demo-image --async --export-format=vhdx
Azure supports VHD images, not VHDX. Fortunately, there is a simple PowerShell utility that can convert the image to VHD. If you've been using Hyper-V in your environment, and specifically using Windows, you may already have the utility installed. If you're a Linux-only shop or don't run your own Hyper-V environment, then you'll need to install the tools on a Windows server.
Log into your Windows Server or spin up a new one in Azure.
Open PowerShell and install Hyper-V PowerShell Tools (https://redmondmag.com/articles/2018/11/16/installing-hyperv-module-for-powershell.aspx AND https://sid-500.com/2018/01/30/how-to-install-hyper-v-and-create-your-first-vm-with-powershell-hyper-host-switch-hyper-v-guest/)
Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName Microsoft-Hyper-V
Reboot
Install-WindowsFeature Hyper-V -IncludeManagementTools
Get-WindowsFeature *Hyper*
Display Name Name Install State
------------ ---- -------------
[X] Hyper-V Hyper-V Installed
[X] Hyper-V Management Tools RSAT-Hyper-V-Tools Installed
[X] Hyper-V GUI Management Tools Hyper-V-Tools Installed
[X] Hyper-V Module for Windows PowerShell Hyper-V-PowerShell Installed
Install Azure PowerShell module (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/azure/install-az-ps?view=azps-1.6.0)
Install-Module -Name Az -AllowClobber
Download the image from the GCE public bucket.
Convert VHDX to VHD using PowerShell (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/windows/prepare-for-upload-vhd-image#convert-disk-by-using-powershell)
Convert-VHD -Path c:\Path\To\Image\ubuntu-demo-image.vhdx -DestinationPath c:\Path\To\Image\ubuntu-demo-image.vhd -VHDType Fixed
Creating a publicly-accessible Blob storage container seems to be the most simplistic approach.
If you're new to Azure, you may want to download the AZ CLI (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/cli/azure/install-azure-cli?view=azure-cli-latest).
For this exercise, a Resource Group already existed (named 'keep'). Documentation, examples, tutorials on how to create your own Resource Group can be found here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/cli/azure/group?view=azure-cli-latest#az-group-create
Create ADLS storage account:
Connect-AzAccount
$location = "eastus"
$storageaccountname = "myvmstore"
New-AzStorageAccount `
>> -ResourceGroupName keep -Name $storageaccountname -Location $location -SkuName "Standard_LRS" `
>> -Kind "Storage"
Make it public:
New-AzStorageContext -StorageAccountName $storageaccountname -Anonymous -Protocol "http"
Create a container named 'public' to drop the image into:
$containerName = "public"
new-AzStoragecontainer -Name $containerName -Permission blob
Uploading the VHD into the new container can be done in a number of different ways. The most efficient is using the Azure AzCopy tool: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/storage/common/storage-use-azcopy?toc=%2fazure%2fstorage%2fblobs%2ftoc.json
Install azcopy using the instructions here: https://aka.ms/downloadazcopy
Now copy the image to Azure:
cd 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Azure\AzCopy\'
.\AzCopy.exe /Source:C:\Path\To\Image\ubuntu-demo-image.vhd /Dest:(https://URI_TO_AZURE_STORAGE_ACCOUNT/public/ubuntu-demo-image.vhd) /DestKey:/<key here> /BlobType:page
Once the image is in Azure, the process to create the VM is straight-forward.
Essentially, you will need to:
- Create an OS Disk from the image
- Create the VM using the OS Disk
More information can be found here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/windows/create-vm-specialized-portal