Automatic Snapshots of VM

Question

Is there a way to automatically create snapshots of a virtual machine in azure? Im not a developer and I dont want to write code to access an API, etc. Its pretty easy to do in Amazon EC2, its just a checkbox. Im just looking for a simple process to create a daily snapshot or backup of my VM. How do other people do it?

Thanks

Answer 1

Unfortunately not as there is no automatic way to do it on daily basis as you described. As your other question on how other people do it, you can use Windows Azure PowerShell command line tools directly from your desktop to create snapshot using save-azurevmimage while your VM is still running and the VM image will be saved to your Azure Storage.

Answer 2

You can backup Azure VMs, both the classic and ARM versions - https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/backup-azure-vms/

Answer 3

Just in case someone got into this page just like I have, Azure now has an automatic backup. See https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/backup/quick-backup-vm-portal?toc=%2fazure%2fvirtual-machines%2fwindows%2ftoc.json

Answer 4

There's also a third party Azure tool called Vmpower.io that can automate snapshots of existing managed (and unmanaged disks) using a simple calendar. This might be helpful here if you aren't interested in writing automation scripts.