az snapshot create --source-region does Azure cross-region disk migration in one CLI call
Migrating an Azure VM to a different region without Site Recovery or Azure Resource Mover
The textbook Azure cross-region VM migration story is Site Recovery + Resource Mover, which is portal-driven, installs a Mobility agent on the source VM, and has a published support matrix that excludes many configurations (Ubuntu 24.04 ARM64 is one). Most blog posts also suggest a more elaborate path involving an intermediate storage account or VHD copy. Hidden but cleaner alternative: az snapshot create --source <source-snapshot-id-in-source-region> --source-region <source-region> -l <target-region> --incremental true does cross-region snapshot copy over Azure's backbone in a single CLI call. Combined with az disk create --source <snapshot-name> and az vm create --attach-os-disk, the whole migration is plain CLI: stop containers → deallocate VM → snapshot disks in source region → cross-region snapshot copy → create disks in target from snapshots → create VM in target. No agent install, no support-matrix restrictions on kernel or arch, no intermediate storage account. Cross-region snapshot copy of 192GB over Azure backbone takes ~30-60 min, dominated by data volume, not network round-trips.
For Azure cross-region VM migrations where Resource Mover support matrix doesn't cover the source OS/arch (notably Ubuntu 24.04 ARM64 today), reach for az snapshot create --source-region directly instead. Cleanly bypasses the Mobility agent dependency.