Windows Azure Virtual Machine (3) Mounts disks on a VM

In the previous chapter I've explained how to create a Windows Server VM that installs SQL Server 2012.

In this chapter I will describe how to mount a disk on this VM.

When you see this, there are readers who might have questions: Why do you want to introduce the features of a mounted disk here? Here I first briefly introduce the concept:

In some existing systems, the system disk (such as C disk) operation is relatively small, and in most cases, except the system disk other than the disk character (such as f disk g disk, etc.) do read and write operations.

We can remotely log on to Windows Azure's virtual Machine, as described in the previous chapter. We see that the default disk has 2, respectively, C and D disks, as shown in the following figure:

I briefly introduce: C disk to save the main OS files, the maximum capacity is 127G

The D disk is to save the temporary file.

Note, however, that the contents of the C disk are persisted, but the D disk is not persistent (from the name we are not difficult to observe, d:temporary Storage).

In other words, if you save the file to D disk. Once a memory failure occurs in the physical host on which the VM resides, and an exception such as a power outage results in an inability to function properly, Azure Fabric control automatically migrates the VM to another normal physical host to ensure that the service is provided properly. However, the file information you save to the D disk will be lost.

In the past, if we wanted to save the persisted content, we would have to put it in Windows Azure storage (including blobs, table, and queue, which I've covered in the previous chapters), but this requires a certain manual development process.

Windows Azure VM offers new features: first create a VHD in Azure storage, and then mount the VHD into a VM to use as a VM's local disk (e-disk or F-disk, for example). When you have finished mounting the disk (for example, if you mount a new letter called e-disk), the content you write to E disk is written to the VHD file in Windows Azure storage.

And we know that Windows Azure storage supports triple backups. This also improves the reliability and integrity of the VHD file. What we put in the storage is foolproof.

Let's start this exercise.

1. First we login to Windows Azure management interface https://manage.windowsazure.com/

2. Select "Virtual machines" in the list to locate the SQL2012VM1 that you created before and select it. The following figure:

3. When selected, the menu bar appears at the bottom of the Management Portal window, and we click Attach--> Attach Empty Disk.

4. In the pop-up window (please note the address of storage location, which I will introduce at the end of this chapter), size set to 50GB

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