RGCOPY

RGCOPY (Resource Group COPY) is a tool that copies the most important resources of an Azure resource group (source RG) to a new resource group (target RG). It can copy a whole landscape consisting of many servers within a single Azure resource group to a new resource group. The target RG might be in a different region or subscription. RGCOPY has been tested on Windows, Linux and in Azure Cloud Shell.

The following example demonstrates the user interface of RGCOPY

$rgcopyParameter = @{
    sourceRG        = 'sap_vmss_zone'
    targetRG        = 'sap_vmss_zone_copy'
    targetLocation  = 'eastus'
    setVmSize       = 'Standard_E4ds_v4'
    setDiskSku      = 'Premium_LRS'
}
.\rgcopy.ps1 @rgcopyParameter

RGCOPY has been developed for copying an SAP landscape and testing Azure with SAP workload. Therefore, it supports the most important Azure resources needed for SAP, for example VMs, disks, load balancers, storage accounts including content of containers and shares.

📝 Note: The list of supported Azure resources is maintained in the RGCOPY documentation: https://github.com/Azure/RGCOPY/blob/main/rgcopy-docu.md#Supported-Azure-Resources

Examples

The following examples show the usage of RGCOPY. In all examples, a source RG with the name 'SAP_master' is copied to the target RG 'SAP_copy'. For better readability, the examples use parameter splatting, see https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/microsoft.powershell.core/about/about_splatting. Before starting RGCOPY, you must run the PowerShell cmdlet Connect-AzAccount.

# connect to Azure
Update-AzConfig -EnableLoginByWam $true
Connect-AzAccount `
    -AuthScope 'Storage' `
    -TenantId '7b5ebd57-e5fd-445f-a920-55897cd71921' `
    -Subscription 'Contoso Subscription'


# start RGCOPY using cached credentials
$rgcopyParameter = @{
    sourceRG        = 'SAP_master'
    targetRG        = 'SAP_copy'
    targetLocation  = 'westus'
}
.\rgcopy.ps1 @rgcopyParameter

You might have cached credentials for different subscriptions and users. In this case, you must specify user and subscription using RGCOPY parameters:

$rgcopyParameter = @{
    # parameters for subscription and user 
    sourceSub       = 'Contoso Subscription'
    sourceSubUser   = 'user@contoso.com'
    sourceSubTenant = '7b5ebd57-e5fd-445f-a920-55897cd71921'

    sourceRG        = 'SAP_master'
    targetRG        = 'SAP_copy'
    targetLocation  = 'westus'
}
.\rgcopy.ps1 @rgcopyParameter

You can store often used parameters in a separate parameter file and pass the filename to RGCOPY. The example above looks like this when having the parameter file parameterFiles\contoso.json

$rgcopyParameter = @{
    # using a parameter file
    parameterFile   = 'parameterFiles\contoso.json'

    sourceRG        = 'SAP_master'
    targetRG        = 'SAP_copy'
    targetLocation  = 'westus'
}
.\rgcopy.ps1 @rgcopyParameter

{
    // file 'parameterFiles\contoso.json'
    "sourceSub": "Contoso Subscription",
    "sourceSubUser": "user@contoso.com",
    "sourceSubTenant": "7b5ebd57-e5fd-445f-a920-55897cd71921",

    "targetSub": "Contoso Subscription",
    "targetSubUser": "user@contoso.com",
    "targetSubTenant": "7b5ebd57-e5fd-445f-a920-55897cd71921"
}

You can change almost all properties of VMs and disks in the target RG. The following example changes the VM size to Standard_M16ms (for VMs HANA1 and HANA2), Standard_M8ms (for VM SAPAPP) and Standard_D2s_v4 (for all other VMs):

$rgcopyParameter = @{
    sourceRG        = 'SAP_master'
    targetRG        = 'SAP_copy'
    targetLocation  = 'westus'

    setVmSize = @(
        'Standard_M16ms @ HANA1, HANA2',
        'Standard_M8ms @ SAPAPP',
        'Standard_D2s_v4'
    )	
}
.\rgcopy.ps1 @rgcopyParameter

Using RGCOPY for moving an SAP system to a different region

We have seen a growing demand of moving complete SAP landscapes to a different region. Unfortunately, Azure Resource Mover does not support all required resource types. Therefore, RGCOPY has been improved to support this scenario in many cases. RGCOPY was originally a Microsoft internal test tool for coping Azure resources of a single resource group. It did not copy all properties of these resources. As of RGCOPY version June 2026:

• The most important resource properties are copied. If a resource property is not copied then RGCOPY gives a warning regarding the missing property. Be aware that future resource properties (of future Azure features) can not be detected by the current RGCOPY version.
• The number of supported resource types has grown. RGCOPY can now copy storage accounts including the content of BLOB containers and SMB/NFS shares. The full list of supported resource types is included in the documentation.
• RGCOPY still requires a single source resource group that contains all VMs and all disks within a single region. However, referenced resources in different resource groups (e.g. VNETs and NICs) are also copied.

Using RGCOPY for moving SAP systems still has some limitations:

• Nature of copy
  • RGCOPY performs a copy, not a move. With a few exceptions, RGCOPY does not change anything inside the VMs like changing the server name at the OS level or applying SAP license keys.
  • On the other hand, performing a copy allows you to test the move. The original system still exists if anything fails.
• User Interface
  • RGCOPY is a command-line tool optimized for automation. You can change almost every property in the target (compared with the source), resulting in about 200 RGCOPY parameters. However, RGCOPY is not integrated into Azure portal and there is no other GUI.
• Downtime
  • If you want to copy a productive system to a test system then the downtime is very short: You just need to stop your productive servers for creating the disk snapshots.
  • However, for moving a system, the downtime is much longer. It includes the time needed for snapshot copy to a different region, deploying the new resource group and performing manual follow-up steps like applying license keys.
  • For workloads that contain a database, you might use database backups to reduce downtime: After copying the resource group using RGCOPY, you might restore the backups (full, differential, incremental, ...) of the source database on the target database. Downtime is then only needed for making and applying the last backup.
• Support
  • RGCOPY has been developed and is maintained by a single person. It is an open source tool, not an official Microsoft product. Microsoft Product Support will not be able to help you with RGCOPY issues, but you can see the source code since it is a PowerShell script.
  • You can suggest future features and report bugs using GitHub Issues.

Open Source version of RGCOPY

RGCOPY has been released as Open Source Software (OSS) in

• https://github.com/Azure/RGCOPY

The documentation of the OSS version is available here:

• https://github.com/Azure/RGCOPY/blob/main/rgcopy-docu.md

There also exists a Microsoft internal version of RGCOPY with additional features. It is stored in a different repository.

YouTube training

You can watch an introduction to RGCOPY on YouTube (22:35):

Trademarks

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