Why the VHD file for OS Disk of a virtual machine is not in Azure Blob container

Question

I tested with creating a resource group, a storage account (Standard and Premium in seperate tests) and a Ubuntu VM, and then used Microsoft Azure Storage Explorer to locate the VHD file.

From various articles, such as this ( https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/storage/blobs/storage-blob-pageblob-overview?tabs=dotnet ), the VHD file should be stored in a page blob container.

But in my case, there is nothing under 'Blob Containers' of my created Storage account.

The OS-Disk for the VM does appear under 'Disks', and then within the sub item sharing the same name as the VM.

I am wondering why this is the case. Why isn't the VHD file in the Blob Container as is indicated by all articles that I have read so far.

Answer 1

I think this situation is because when you create Ubuntu VM, it use the managed disks.

Here is some quote from Azure document :

"When deploying an Azure VM, you must choose the type of disks that will host the operating system disk and, optionally, data disks. You can use the unmanaged or managed disk type. Your decision has important implications in terms of functionality, manageability, and pricing."

"'Unmanaged disks' With unmanaged disks, you must manage Azure Storage accounts where Azure VM disks will reside. You must decide how many storage accounts you will create and how you will distribute .vhd disk files across them. This additional management overhead might be significant in larger environments, due to the need to address capacity, performance, and resiliency constraints.

You can eliminate this overhead by using managed disks. With this approach, the Azure platform controls the placement of VM disk files and hides the complexity associated with managing Azure Storage accounts."

Hope this info. is useful to you.

Best Regards NTT DATA Taiwan/ Technical Consultant/ Steven Hsu