Image a Windows Virtual Machine In Azure, then Deploy And Join It To A Domain

17th of August, 2016 / / 4 Comments

The following Azure Resource Manager mode PowerShell will allow you to create an image of an existing Windows virtual machine in Azure, deploy it at will and join it to a domain if necessary.

Login to PowerShell

[code language=”powershell”]
Get-AzureSubscription
$SubID = "your-subscription-ID"
Login-AzureRMAccount
Select-AzureRmSubscription -SubscriptionId $SubID
[/code]

Create the virtual machine image

Run sysprep on the desired virtual machine in Azure.

[code language=”dos”]%windir%\system32\sysprep[/code]

When prompted for System Cleanup Action choose ‘Enter System Out of The Box Experience (OOBE)‘, Generalize and Shutdown from Shutdown Options.… [Keep reading] “Image a Windows Virtual Machine In Azure, then Deploy And Join It To A Domain”

Replicate Client OS to Azure with Azure Site Recovery

17th of August, 2016 / / 1 Comment

In this blog, I will discuss how you can replicate and eventually protect a client OS, e.g. Windows 7, Windows 8, or Windows 10 to Azure with the Azure Site Recovery (ASR), even if you don’t have an MSDN subscription.

Before we do so however, this blog will not go into detail on how to set up ASR. The steps are outlined on Microsoft’s Azure ASR website.

It may sound simple, and it really is, but there’s a catch into getting this done.… [Keep reading] “Replicate Client OS to Azure with Azure Site Recovery”

Connecting to and Using the Azure MFA Web Service SDK Server SOAP API with Powershell

16th of August, 2016 / / 10 Comments

Background

A colleague and I are validating a number of scenarios for a customer who is looking to deploy Azure MFA Server. One of the requirements from an Identity Management perspective is the ability to interact with the MFA Server for user information. That led us on the exploration of what was possible and how best to approach it.

The title of this post has pretty much given it away as to how. But why ?… [Keep reading] “Connecting to and Using the Azure MFA Web Service SDK Server SOAP API with Powershell”

Monitoring Azure WebJobs Health with Application Insights

11th of August, 2016 / / 11 Comments

Introduction

Azure WebJobs have been available for quite some time and have become very popular for running background tasks with programs or scripts. WebJobs are deployed as part of Azure App Services (Web Apps), which include their companion site Kudu. Kudu provides a lot of features, including a REST API, which provides operations for source code management (SCM), virtual file system, deployments, accessing logs, and for WebJob management as well. The Kudu WebJobs API provides different operations including listing WebJobs, uploading a WebJob, or triggering it.… [Keep reading] “Monitoring Azure WebJobs Health with Application Insights”

Getting Users, Groups & Contacts via the Azure Graph API using Differential Query & PowerShell

11th of August, 2016 / / 1 Comment

This is the final post in a series detailing using PowerShell to leverage the Azure AD Graph API. For those catching up it started here introducing using PowerShell to access the Azure AD via the Graph API, licensing users in Azure AD via Powershell and the Graph API, and returning all objects using paging via Powershell and the Graph API.

In this post I show how to;

  • enumerate objects from Azure AD via Powershell and the Graph API, and set a delta change cookie
  • enumerate changes in Azure AD since the last query
  • return objects that have changed since the last query
  • return just the changed attributes on objects that have changed since the last query
  • get a differential sync from now delta change link

Searching through MSDN and other resources working this out I somehow stumbled upon a reference to changes in the API that detail the search filters.… [Keep reading] “Getting Users, Groups & Contacts via the Azure Graph API using Differential Query & PowerShell”

Enumerating all Users/Groups/Contacts in an Azure tenant using PowerShell and the Azure Graph API ‘odata.nextLink’ paging function

10th of August, 2016 / / 7 Comments

Recently I posted about using PowerShell and the Azure Active Directory Authentication Library to connect to Azure AD here. Whilst that post detailed performing simple tasks like updating an attribute on a user, in this post I’ll use the same method to connect to Azure AD via PowerShell but cover;

  • enumerate users, contacts or groups
  • where the number of objects is greater than the maximum results per page, get all remaining pages of results
  • limit results based on filters

The premise of my script was one that could just be executed without prompts.… [Keep reading] “Enumerating all Users/Groups/Contacts in an Azure tenant using PowerShell and the Azure Graph API ‘odata.nextLink’ paging function”

Passing Parameters to Linked ARM Templates

8th of August, 2016 / / 4 Comments

Recently, my workmate Vic wrote some great posts regarding to Azure Linked Templates. This is, a supplementary post to his ones, to show how to share parameters across the linked templates.

Scripts and templates used in this post can be found at: https://github.com/devkimchi/Linked-ARM-Templates-Sample

parametersLink and parameters Properties

We have a master template, master-deployment.json, and it looks like:

Each nested template has a parameter called environment that has the same value as the one in the master template.… [Keep reading] “Passing Parameters to Linked ARM Templates”

Performance Tuning Ubuntu Server For Use in Azure cloud

8th of August, 2016 / / 3 Comments

The following describes how to performance tune Ubuntu Server virtual machines for use in Azure. Although this article focuses on Ubuntu Server because it’s better established in Azure at this time. It’s worth mentioning that Debian offers better performance and stability overall, albeit at the cost of some of the more recent functionality support available in Ubuntu. Regardless many of the optimizations discussed below apply equally to both although commands and settings may vary occasionally.

Best practice recommendations from Microsoft.… [Keep reading] “Performance Tuning Ubuntu Server For Use in Azure cloud”

Azure Deployment Models And How To Migrate From ASM to ARM

4th of August, 2016 / / 9 Comments

This is a post about the two deployment models currently available in Azure, Service Management (ASM) and Resource Manager (ARM). And how to migrate from one to the other if necessary.

About the Azure Service Management deployment model

The ASM model, also known as version 1 and Classic mode, started out as a web interface and a backend API for the PaaS services Azure opened with at launch.

Features

  1. ASM deployments are based on an XML schema.
… [Keep reading] “Azure Deployment Models And How To Migrate From ASM to ARM”