Create Storage and add Lighthouse VHD Image

IMPORTANT: Before you perform this procedure, ensure that you have read the Before you begin section.

1. Login to the Microsoft Azure portal at https://portal.azure.com.

2. Under Azure Services, click the Storage Accounts icon.

3. Create a storage account:

   1. At the top of the page, click Create.
      The Create a storage account page displays.

   2. Create a storage account with at least 50GB of storage space.

      Note: Navigate through the tabs and complete any mandatory fields as required for your organization, ensuring that you select at least 50GB of storage space.
      

   3. At the bottom of the page, click Review + create.

   4. Wait for validation to complete, then at the bottom of the page, click Create.
      

4. Navigate to the newly created storage account.

   Note: You can either click the Go to resource button immediately after the storage account is created, or you can navigate to Azure Services, click the Storage Accounts icon and then click the storage account.

5. In the left-hand menu, expand Data storage and then click Containers.
   

6. At the top of the page click + Container to create a new blob container.
   

7. In the New container dialog on the right-hand side, enter a Name for the blob container, then click Create.
   The new container appears on the Containers page.

8. Use AzCopy to copy the Lighthouse VHD image into the Azure storage container:

   Note: AzCopy is recommended because the VHD image is large and the upload can take a long time to complete through the Microsoft Azure portal.

   1. Ensure that you have installed AzCopy. See the Before you begin section.

   2. Generate a SAS token to use in your AzCopy commands:

      1. Ensure that you are viewing the newly created storage container.

         Note: If you are still on the Containers page after step 7, click the name of the container.

      2. On the left-hand menu, expand Settings and then click Access policy.
         

      3. Under the Stored access policies section, click Add policy.
         The Add policy dialog displays.

      4. Enter the Identifier.

      5. Click the Permissions drop-down and select Read, Write, and Create from the list.

      6. Set a valid Start time and Expiry time.

      7. Click OK.
         The Add policy dialog closes.

      8. At the top of the page, click Save.

      9. On the left-hand menu, expand Settings and then click Shared access tokens.

      10. From the Stored access policy drop-down, select the policy you added in steps iii to viii.

      11. At the bottom of the page, click Generate SAS token and URL.
          

      12. When they appear, copy the Blob SAS token and Blob SAS URL.

          Note: The Blob SAS token and Blob SAS URL must be copied at this point in the process as you cannot view the information again after this step.

   3. Copy the Lighthouse VHD image into the Azure storage container using the following format: ./azcopy copy <path_to_local_image_file> "<blob_sas_url>".
      Ensure that you use the path to your local Lighthouse VHD image and the Blob SAS URL generated in steps xi and xii.

      Note:  You can also create a SAS token using Azure CLI. See Microsoft instructions to Create a user delegation SAS for a container.

9. Complete the steps in Create an Image.