How to convert Azure "unmanaged" Operating System disks to Managed Disks using Powershell

It is very easy to convert an "unmanaged" disk to a Managed Disk inside Azure, if the source VM is standalone and not part of an Availability Set. I recently had to do this after I had "lifted and shifted" a handful of VM's to Azure for a POC. The idea was that I would create new VM's from a specialised VHD's which were uploaded to Azure Storage. I did some research to see what the process was like for moving migrated VM's to Managed Disks.

The following PowerShell code can be used to convert a VM's unmanaged disk to a Managed Disk, please note that this will automatically convert all the associated data disks attached to the VM.

$rgName = "myResourceGroup" $vmName = "myVM" Stop-AzureRmVM -ResourceGroupName $rgName -Name $vmName -Force ConvertTo-AzureRmVMManagedDisk -ResourceGroupName $rgName -VMName $vmName Start-AzureRmVM -ResourceGroupName $rgName -Name $vmName

The process takes some time to complete, mainly because Azure copies the VHD from the Azure Storage Account. However, it is very quick, my 45GB VM was converted in less than 5 minutes. Once the conversion is completed, the VM will start and the lease on the original VHD will be released. 

When you convert a VHD to a Managed Disk, the Managed Disk is automatically labelled the same name as the VM. It discounts the name of the source VHD from the storage account.