Nested Virtual PowerShell Desktop Environments on Windows 10 & Windows Server 2019 in Azure – Part 3

27th of November, 2018 / / No Comments

This is the third and likely last post in this series. In Part 1 I introduced the capability to have Virtual PowerShell Environments using Docker and the full Windows 10 / Server 2019 Build 1809 container images. In Part 2 I detailed remotely access the Azure RM Windows 10 / Server 2019 host that contains the Docker Container with our full Windows 1809 environment (and therefore PowerShell Desktop).

In this post I’ll detail building a Docker Image based off of the Windows 1809 Container image.… [Keep reading] “Nested Virtual PowerShell Desktop Environments on Windows 10 & Windows Server 2019 in Azure – Part 3”

Nested Virtual PowerShell Desktop Environments on Windows 10 & Windows Server 2019 in Azure – Part 2

22nd of November, 2018 / / 1 Comment 
27 Nov 18 Part 3 is available here that details customizing 
an image and accessing it via other SSH clients with elevated
access.

In Part-1 of this series posted yesterday I showed that with Windows 10/Windows Server 2019 we can now have isolated virtual environments for PowerShell Desktop in Azure through containerization.

In this post I’ll show how I plan to leverage this capability from a mobility perspective. What we need to do first is enable elevated (privileged) access to our VM.… [Keep reading] “Nested Virtual PowerShell Desktop Environments on Windows 10 & Windows Server 2019 in Azure – Part 2”

Deploying a SailPoint IdentityNow Virtual Appliance in Azure

3rd of May, 2018 / / No Comments

Introduction

The CentOS image that SailPoint provide for the IdentityNow Virtual Appliance that performs integration between ‘Sources’ and IdentityNow is VMWare based. I don’t have any VMWare Infrastructure to run it on and really didn’t want to run up any VMWare environments for this component. All my other infrastructure is in Azure. I’d love to run my VA(s) in Azure too.
In discussions with SailPoint I understand it is simply a case that they haven’t certified their CentOS image on Azure.… [Keep reading] “Deploying a SailPoint IdentityNow Virtual Appliance in Azure”

Enabling and Scripting Azure Virtual Machine Just-In-Time Access

24th of July, 2017 / / No Comments

Last week (19 July 2017) one of Microsoft’s Azure Security Center’s latest features went from Private Preview to Public Preview. The feature is Azure Just in time Virtual Machine Access.

What is Just in time Virtual Machine access ?

Essentially JIT VM Access is a wrapper for automating an Azure Network Security Group rule set for access to an Azure VM(s) for a temporal period on a set of network ports restricted to a source IP/Network.… [Keep reading] “Enabling and Scripting Azure Virtual Machine Just-In-Time Access”

The quickest way to create new VMs in Azure from existing VM snapshots, mostly with PowerShell

9th of June, 2017 / / 11 Comments

There’s probably multiple ways to do this, both right and wrong, but, here’s a process that I’ve been using for a while that I’ve recently tweaked to take advantage of new Azure Managed Disks.

Sidebar – standard managed disk warning

Before I go on though, I wanted to issue a quick warning about the differences between standard unmanaged and managed disks. Microsoft will be pushing you to you Managed Disks more and more. Yes, its a great feature that makes the management of VM disks simpler.

… [Keep reading] “The quickest way to create new VMs in Azure from existing VM snapshots, mostly with PowerShell”

Automating the simultaneous deployment of AzureRM Virtual Machines for a development environment

22nd of February, 2016 / / 14 Comments

This post is details my method for automating the creation of AzureRM virtual machines for use in a development environment. I’m using this process to quickly standup an environment for testing configurations on.

In summary this process;

  • parallel creation of the AzureRM Virtual Machines
  • All machines have the same configuration
    • NIC, Disks etc
  • All machines are created in a new Resource Group, with associated Virtual Network

Simultaneous Creating the AzureRM Virtual Machines for MIM 2016

For my MIM 2016 Lab I’m going to create 5 Virtual Machines.… [Keep reading] “Automating the simultaneous deployment of AzureRM Virtual Machines for a development environment”

Azure’s G Series VMs – Prime Compute Only One Click Away!

11th of March, 2015 / / 3 Comments

I’m going to start this blog post by making one thing clear. My intent in writing this post is light-hearted – I had some spare time on my hands over a lunch break and I wondered what I could do with it. The result was this blog post :).

Ever since Microsoft announced their G Series Virtual Machines for Azure I’ve been looking for a good reason to fire one up and kick the tyres. Today while I was skimming through my Twitter feed I came across a tweet showing the time it took to calculate the trillionth prime number on a 16 vCPU Linux instance running on GCP.… [Keep reading] “Azure’s G Series VMs – Prime Compute Only One Click Away!”