I would like to create an Azure VM with a smaller OS disc than the default 127gb. I've been unable to find such an option in the Azure Portal, so I have attempted to shrink the disk. I have not been successful.
I understand I can trim (using the defragmentation tool) and shrink the volume (with Disk Management) but this won't change the "physical" size of the hard disk. That is, if I shrink the disk to 40gb, there will just be 87gb unallocated and the blob will still report 127gb.
What I am attempting to achieve is to shrink the blob to match the allocated space facilitating smaller downloads/exports of the VM image (e.g. 40 vs 127gb).
Any and all help is appreciated.
I have written a blog post detailing this answer in full. But the main issue here was being able to reduce the size of the Azure VM which defaults to 127gb in order to allow for fasted export/download. The way I have achieved this is by trimming the hard drive and then using Disk2VHD to create a VHD file of the running VM. Disk2VHD will create an expandable disk that is only as large as the current data on the disc, not the entire available disk. In my case 40gb vs 127gb. If one saves this VHD file to an attached disk (read: blob storage) it can be easily downloaded via HTTP by your entire team. Thus, the download is now 40gbs instead of 127gbs. For more, please read my detailed blog post:
http://www.kevinmcloutier.com/?p=263
Original link no longer works: https://web.archive.org/web/20161027213258/http://kevinmcloutier.com/post/4