Export an Azure Managed Snapshot to Storage Account — PowerShell

Azure Snapshots of managed virtual hard drives (vhds) are stored in Resource Groups (as opposed to ‘unmanaged’ Snapshots being stored in storage accounts). While it is possible to move the managed snapshots to another subscription using PowerShell, there are advantages to having a copy of crucial core snapshots readily available and protected as a Page Blobs in a Storage Account.

With PowerShell, copies of the Snapshots can be exported to an Azure Storage Account to be able to:

• Maintain a separated set of crucial snapshot copies that cannot be deleted by accident, helpful as another Disaster Recovery point

• Quickly & easily copy Snapshots to a different Azure account or subscription using Microsoft Azure Storage Explorer and then create new managed disks and VMs in the different Account or subscription

• At the time of this writing, VMs with managed disks cannot be moved from one Azure region to another. The workaround is to export a snapshot of the VMs managed disks to a storage account in a different region, and then re-create the VM with the managed disk(s) in a Resource Group in the different region. Read more here.