Does Deleting an Azure Managed Disk Also Delete Snapshots?

TL;DR: No.

I’ve been working with numerous customers on Windows Virtual Desktop (WVD) deployments since I started my position at Microsoft. During the process of manually* creating an image, it’s common to take snapshots. I especially recommend taking snapshots before sysprepping the image.

Once you sysprep an Azure VM, the VM itself is unusable; it won’t successfully boot anymore. So keeping the VM around is useless once you have the generalized image you need to set up WVD session hosts. However, you want to keep the pre-sysprep snapshot around. So the question arises, in order to keep the snapshot, do you need to keep the disk? Keep in mind that both the disk and snapshot are Azure resources and incur a charge.

Here’s an Azure CLI test script that will help you determine the answer to the original question for yourself. The script assumes you have the latest version of the CLI (2.17 at the time of writing) and that you have already logged in (az login) and selected an appropriate subscription. You might for example run this script in Azure Cloud Shell.

	# A valid password requires a length of 12 and at least one upper/lower/digit
	pattern="(?=.\d)(?=.[a-z])(?=.[A-Z])."
	# Generate a random string of 12 characters to make the names unique and to use as a password
	while ! echo $random12 \| grep -P "(?=.\d)(?=.[a-z])(?=.[A-Z])."
	do
	random12=$(head /dev/urandom \| tr -dc a-zA-Z0-9 \| fold -w 12 \| head -n 1)
	done

	region="eastus"
	group="rg-disk-test-$random12"
	vm1name="vm-disk-test-$random12"

	# Create a new resource group for this test
	az group create -n $group -l $region

	# Don't do this in real life, where the password equals part of the VM name
	# Let the command create a new VNET, we're deleting it shortly anyway
	az vm create -g $group -l $region -n $vm1name –admin-password $random12 \
	–admin-username azureuser –authentication-type password \
	–image UbuntuLTS –public-ip-address ""

	diskId=$(az vm show -g $group -n $vm1name -o tsv –query "{ os:storageProfile.osDisk.managedDisk.id }")

	# Create a snapshot
	az snapshot create -g $group -n "$vm1name-ss" –source $diskId

	# Delete the VM
	az vm delete -g $group -n $vm1name –yes

	# Delete the disk
	az disk delete –id $diskId –yes

	# Find the snapshot (yes, it's still there)
	az snapshot show -g $group -n "$vm1name-ss"

	# Clean up: delete the whole RG
	az group delete -n $group –yes

view raw Test-ManagedDiskDeleteSnapshot.azcli hosted with ❤ by GitHub

Note: When you delete a VM, it doesn’t automatically delete associated Azure resources. Commonly, I see Azure administrators forgetting about the disk, the network interface card (NIC), and the public IP (if there is one). Be sure to clean up those orphaned resources!

*: I am a big fan of Azure Image Builder (AIB) and automating the image build process. However, AIB is still in preview and most customers also weren’t mature enough to attempt that approach.

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