How Can I Move My VMs to Different Subscriptions Without Losing My VNet Setup?
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CloudExplorer99
I have 7 VMs in one subscription but want to organize them better for invoicing purposes. Specifically, I need to move 2 VMs to NewSubscriptionA and 2 other VMs to NewSubscriptionB, while the remaining 3 VMs stay where they are. The challenge is that all 7 of these VMs are in the same VNet, and from what I gather, I can't just move VMs to a new subscription without moving the VNet and its dependencies too. What's the best strategy to achieve this? Keep in mind, all VMs are also protected by Azure Backup.
Answers
I had to do a similar move for a contractor before. The approach we took was to create snapshots of all the disks while targeting the new subscription. After that, we created new disks from those snapshots and spun up VMs again from the OS disks, attaching data disks as needed. Just a heads up, make sure the disks and the VM are in the same availability zone when you try to attach them later. If you’re moving to a new subscription, you might want to set up a new VNet since that’s a requirement. And public IPs can be reassigned between subscriptions too. If the VMs need to communicate with each other, VNet peering might be an alternative to consider, even if it incurs some costs.
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VMoverPro: I totally overlooked the VNet requirement too and I agree, splitting everything into new VNets feels excessive for my setup. If you can’t avoid it for the subscriptions, I think I might have to abandon this plan.