Automating Microsoft Azure Infrastructure Services: From the Data Center to the Cloud with PowerShell

by Michael Washam

Overview

Get valuable tips and techniques for automating your cloud deployments with Azure PowerShell cmdlets, and learn how to provision Azure services on the fly. In this hands-on guide, Microsoft cloud technology expert Michael Washam shows you how to automate various management tasks and deploy solutions that are both complex and at scale.

By combining the native automation capabilities of PowerShell with Azure Infrastructure Services, these powerful cmdlets enable you to create and configure virtual machines with ease. You’ll learn how to take advantage of these technologies to build complete virtual networks. If you have experience with PowerShell and Azure, you’re ready to get started.

• Install and authenticate cmdlets to set up your environment
• Create and update virtual machines with Azure platform images
• Manage network endpoints, access control lists, and IP addresses
• Use cmdlets to manage and configure virtual machine storage
• Automate Azure virtual networks with hybrid technologies such as site-to-site, point-to-site, and ExpressRoute
• Dive into advanced virtual machine provisioning capabilities and management techniques
• Learn tips and tricks for deleting or moving virtual machines within (or out of) your subscription

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781491944851
Publisher:	O'Reilly Media, Incorporated
Publication date:	10/21/2014
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	178
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Michael Washam is the CEO and Co-Founder of Opsgility – http://www.opsgility.com. Opsgility delivers instructor-led, remote-classroom and on-demand training focused on Microsoft cloud technologies. Michael has extensive history in the IT Industry where he has worked as an IT Professional, Developer, Evangelist and Program Manager. While at Microsoft as a Senior Program Manager on the Microsoft Azure Runtime Team, Michael led the release of the Microsoft Azure PowerShell Cmdlets for compute and the Microsoft Azure SDK (runtime). As a Senior Technical Evangelist Michael worked on the initial Microsoft Azure Infrastructure-as-a-Service launch. In this role Michael also shipped the IaaS Microsoft Azure training kit, and the Microsoft Azure PowerShell Cmdlets for IaaS and Cloud Services.

Michael is a globally recognized speaker at conferences such as BUILD and TechEd, avid blogger, speaker, and trainer on cloud computing, debugging, and DevOps.

Table of Contents

Foreword vii

Preface ix

1 Introduction 1

Why Use the Microsoft Azure PowerShell Cmdlets? 1

Comparing Deployment Methods 2

Deploying an Application in a Traditional Data Center 2

Deploying an Application in the Cloud (Without Automation) 2

Deploying an Application in the Cloud (with Automation) 2

History 3

Open Source 4

Summary 4

2 Getting Started with Azure PowerShell 5

Installation 5

Setting Up Your Environment 5

Authenticating to Microsoft Azure 6

Managing Subscriptions 8

Executing Scripts in This Book 10

Summary 11

3 Virtual Machines 13

Creating Virtual Machines with PowerShell 13

Virtual Machine Location and Storage 34

Selecting the Virtual Machine Platform Image 17

Virtual Machine Size 18

Cloud Services and Virtual Machines 19

Creating a Virtual Machine with New-AzureQuickVM 20

Creating a Virtual Machine Configuration with New-AzureVMConfig 22

Specifying the Initial Provisioning Configuration 22

Adding Storage with Add-AzureDataDisk 23

Creating Network Endpoints at Provisioning 24

Creating a Virtual Machine with New-AzureVM 25

How New-AzureVM Works 27

Querying Virtual Machines with Get-AzureVM 28

Changing a Virtual Machine Configuration 32

Stopping and Starting Virtual Machines 34

Summary 35

4 Virtual Machine Networking 37

Automating the Network 37

Handling External Traffic 37

Port Forwarding 37

Load Balancing 38

Health Probes 40

TCP Health Probes 40

HTTP Health Probes 41

Health Probe Time-outs 42

Updating Endpoints 43

Access Control 45

Adding and Updating Access Control Lists 46

Reserved IP Addresses 49

Public IP Addresses 51

Summary 53

5 Virtual Machine Storage 55

Storage Management 55

Uploading and Downloading VHDs 55

Uploading a VHD 55

Creating a Local VHD with Windows 57

Validating the Disk 61

Downloading a VHD 61

Save-AzureVHD Tips 62

Disks and Images 63

What Is an Image? 63

What Is a Disk? 64

Managing Images 65

Viewing Image Properties 66

Capturing a Generalized Image 67

Updating a Virtual Machine Image 72

Deleting a Virtual Machine Image 73

OS Images and VM Images 73

Managing Disks 75

OS Disks 75

Data Disks 76

Viewing Disk Properties 77

Specifying Disk Locations at VM Creation 78

Specifying Cache 80

Custom Images, Disks, and Storage Accounts 82

Managing Storage with PowerShell 82

Storage Account Geo-Replication 83

Authenticating Access to Storage 84

Setting the Public Access Policy for a Container 87

Managing Blob Data 87

Asynchronous Blob Copy 90

Summary 96

6 Virtual Networks 99

Understanding Virtual Network Configuration 99

Dynamically Adding a Virtual Network 101

Updating a Virtual Network Configuration 106

Deleting a virtual network 106

Adding or removing DNS 107

Adding or removing subnets and local network sites 107

Removing the Network Configuration 107

Provisioning into a Virtual Network 107

Understanding IP Address Assignment 110

Specifying Static IP Addresses 113

Moving Virtual Machines to Different Subnets 115

Hybrid Network Connectivity 116

Gateway Management 117

Creating and Automating Gateways 120

Using the Internal Load Balancer 122

Intranet workloads 122

N-tier workloads 123

Validating the internal load balancer 126

Updating internal load-balanced endpoints 126

There can be only one 126

Adding an internal load balancer to an existing deployment 126

Removing an internal load balancer from an existing deployment 127

Viewing the internal load-balancer configuration on an existing deployment 127

ExpressRoute 127

Summary 132

7 Advanced Virtual Machines 133

Virtual Machine Provisioning 133

Provisioning Linux Virtual Machines 133

Availability Sets 136

Provisioning Virtual Machines in an Availability Set 138

Adding Existing Virtual Machines to an Availability Set 139

Specifying the Time Zone 140

Configuring Windows Update 141

Deploying Certificates 141

Managing Access Control Options 142

Domain Join 142

Using PowerShell Remoting 144

Configuring a Secure Connection 144

Invoking PowerShell Commands 146

Multiple Hops Using Remote PowerShell 147

Virtual Machine Agent and Extensions 147

Virtual Machine Extensions 148

BgInfo Extension 149

Access Extension 149

Custom Script Extension 150

Deleting Virtual Machines 154

Deleting a Single Virtual Machine 154

Deleting Multiple Virtual Machines 155

Importing and Exporting Virtual Machine Configurations 156

Summary and Conclusion 158

Index 159