Migrating AWAY from Virtual Machine Scale Sets

Question

Hoping anyone can help me, we have had a situation where someone deployed a virtual machine in a virtual machine scale set, we would like to move to a basic azure virtual machine but I don't really see how to do this with a VMSS image,

Does anyone have some documentation or how-to? I looked everywhere.

Regards

Answer 1

You cannot directly "move" a VM from a VMSS, as VMSS instances are managed differently from individual VMs. However, you can capture the VMSS image and use it to create a new standalone VM. Here's a high-level guide on how to do this:

• Steps to Move from VMSS to a Standalone Azure VM:
  1. Capture the VMSS Image:
     • Identify the VM instance you want to replicate as a standalone VM.
     • Deallocate and generalize the VM (similar to capturing an image of a regular VM).

               az vmss deallocate --instance-id <instance-id> --resource-group <resource-group> --name <vmss-name>
       

az vmss generalize --instance-id <instance-id> --resource-group <resource-group> --name <vmss-name> ```

  - Capture the image:
  
    ```azurecli
    az vm image create --resource-group <resource-group> --name <image-name> --
    ```
    

1. Create a Standalone Virtual Machine:
   • Once the image is captured, you can create a new VM using the captured image:

             az vm create --resource-group <resource-group> --name <new-vm-name> --image <image-name> --admin-username <username> --authentication-type <password/ssh>
     

   • During VM creation, you can specify any required size (e.g., a basic VM size).
2. Configure the New VM:
   • After the VM is created, configure it as needed (networking, disks, public IP, etc.).
   • Attach or reconfigure any necessary data disks or other resources that were attached to the VMSS instance.

Considerations:

• Data Disks: If your VMSS instance had data disks, you need to ensure those are properly moved or reattached.
• Availability: The VM created from the VMSS image will be standalone, so ensure you account for the loss of automatic scaling and load balancing features from the VMSS.
• Scaling: Once converted to a basic VM, scaling and management will need to be handled manually.

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hth

Marcin

Answer 2

Hi Charl,

In addition to the information provided by Marcin above.

Subject to limitations, you may Detach the VM from the VM Scale Set. To do this you would navigate to the VM -- Availability + scale -- Availability + scaling blade and click Detach from the VMSS.

After detaching the VM you should verify that its networking configuration is as desired in terms of load balancing/public IP and make changes as needed.

Please click Accept Answer and upvote if the above was helpful.

Thanks.

-TP