Tag: Cloud Shell

Aug112020August 11, 2020August 25, 20202 Commentsby Thomas Maurer

Connect Azure Cloud Shell to Virtual Network vNet

Posted in Cloud, Containers, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure, PowerShell

As you know, Azure Cloud Shell is a great management tool to manage your Azure resources. Azure Cloud Shell is an interactive, authenticated, browser-accessible shell for managing Azure resources. It provides the flexibility of choosing the shell experience that best suits the way you work, either Bash or PowerShell. You can learn more about Azure Cloud Shell here. If you wanted to manage Azure resources such as Azure virtual machines (VMs), you needed to connect to a public IP address of a virtual machine, which really didn’t work in all scenarios. With the latest update, you can now connect Azure Cloud Shell to an Azure virtual network (vNet). With the new method, you can now deploy the Azure Cloud Shell container within your virtual network (vNet), which now allows you to use PowerShell remoting, SSH, or other command-line tools such as kubctl using private IP addresses.

Requirements

Before you can use Cloud Shell in your own Azure Virtual Network, you will need to create some resources to support this functionality.

Virtual Network – The virtual network in which the resources are located you want to manage or the network that peers with a virtual network where your Azure resources are.
Subnet – In that virtual network you will need a dedicated subnet to host Cloud Shell containers.
Network profile
Azure Relay – An Azure Relay allows two endpoints that are not directly reachable to communicate.
Storage Account – The storage account needs to be accessible from the virtual network that is used by Cloud Shell.

There are also some considerations you need to be aware of, such as currently supported Azure regions during the preview, Azure Relay adds additional cost and slower startup speed of Cloud Shell containers. You can learn more about the requirements here.

Connect Azure Cloud Shell to a virtual network

To make the deployment easy, there are Azure Resource Manager templates available to deploy the necessary network and storage resources. In my step by step guide, I already have a virtual network deployed within my subscription with the resources I manage. If you don’t have that yet, and you want to try this out, you will need to create a resource group and a virtual network.

Simply the deploy the following two templates:

Deploy Azure Cloud Shell Network ARM template

You can get the Azure Container Instance OID by running the following command:

Get-AzADServicePrincipal -DisplayNameBeginsWith 'Azure Container Instance'

Also, make sure that the subnet ranges are part of the address range in your virtual network.

Reconnect Cloud Shell

If you have used Azure Cloud Shell before, you will need to reconnect that to the specific resources. You can simply run the command “cloudrive unmount” or “dismount-cloudrive”.

After that you can reconnect your Cloud Shell and select the isolated network option. Keep in mind this feature is currently in preview, and only available in West US and West Central US.

Connect Azure Cloud Shell to virtual network

This will then take a moment to deploy.

Requesting a container

After the Cloud Shell container is deployed within the virtual network, you can now start using private IP addresses within that virtual network or virtual networks that are peered.

SSH into Azure VM with Private IP address from Cloud Shell

I hope this blog gives you a short overview of how you can integrate Cloud Shell in your private Azure virtual network. If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment.

Nov192019November 19, 2019November 18, 20190 Commentby Thomas Maurer

Run Azure Cloud Shell in Windows Admin Center

Posted in Azure Stack HCI, Cloud, Hyper-V, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Azure Stack, PowerShell, Windows, Windows Admin Center, Windows Server, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2016, Windows Server 2019, Windows Terminal

As you know Windows Admin Center enables you to not just manage Windows Server machines with a web-based user interface, but also to easily connect Azure Hybrid services to your on-premises Windows Server environment. Windows Admin Center allows you to connect services like Azure File Sync, Azure Update Management, Azure Backup, Azure Site Recovery and many more to your Windows Server and Azure Stack HCI environment. With the latest release of Windows Admin Center (WAC) which was announced at Microsoft Ignite 2019, we get another hybrid cloud feature. We get a new Azure Cloud Shell extension in Windows Admin Center. Azure Cloud Shell is an interactive, authenticated, browser-accessible shell for managing Azure resources. It provides the flexibility of choosing the shell experience that best suits the way you work, either Bash or PowerShell. We are able to use Cloud Shell directly from the Azure portal, shell.azure.com, in Visual Studio Code, in the new Windows Terminal or even in the Azure mobile app. Now with the new solution/extension, administrators can also run Cloud Shell directly within WAC.

How to run Azure Cloud Shell in Windows Admin Center

First, you will need to enable and install the new Azure Cloud Shell solution. For that open Windows Admin Center, go to Settings and in the menu click on Extensions.

Extensions

Under available extensions, you will find the new Azure Cloud Shell (Preview) extension. Click on Install, the WAC portal will refresh automatically.

After the page has refreshed, the Cloud Shell option will show up in the top menu.

Start Cloud Shell in Windows Admin Center

If you start Azure Cloud Shell for the first time, you will need to login to Azure.

After that, you can run the PowerShell or Bash experience, depending on what you prefer. You also have access to the clouddrive which comes with Cloud Shell.

Azure Cloud Shell in Windows Admin Center

In that, you can run tools like the Azure CLI, Azure PowerShell and much more. If you want to learn more about Azure Cloud Shell, check out my blog post, Mastering Azure with Cloud Shell. Windows Admin Center is a free download to use with your Windows Servers, you can download Windows Admin Center here. If you want to know more about the Hybrid capabilities, check out my blog post on ITOpsTalk.com.

I hope this gives you an overview of how you can run Azure Cloud Shell in Windows Admin Center. Let me know if you have any questions in the comments.

Oct152019October 15, 2019October 14, 20191 Commentby Thomas Maurer

Deploy and Configure Windows Admin Center in Azure VM

Deploy and Install Windows Admin Center in an Azure VM

Posted in Cloud, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure, PowerShell, Windows Admin Center, Windows Server, Windows Server 2016, Windows Server 2019

The great thing about Windows Admin Center (WAC) you manage every Windows Server doesn’t matter where it is running. You can manage Windows Servers on-prem, in Azure or running at other cloud providers. Now if you want to use Windows Admin Center to manage your virtual machines running in Azure, you can use either an on-prem WAC installation and connecting it using a public IP address or a VPN connection, or you can deploy and install Windows Admin Center in Azure. This blog post will show you how you can deploy and install Windows Admin Center in an Azure virtual machine (VM).

How to deploy and install Windows Admin Center in an Azure virtual machine (VM)

With this guide, you can directly deploy and install a new Windows Admin Center gateway in an Azure VM. If you have already a VM deployed, you can also follow this guide to install Windows Admin Center manually. For the installation, we will use Azure Cloud Shell do run a PowerShell installation script.

Preparation

As mentioned we will run the installation script from Azure Cloud Shell. Optionally you can also install Azure PowerShell on your location machine and run the same steps for the installation on your local machine.

Set up Azure Cloud Shell if you haven’t done it yet.
Start the PowerShell experience in Cloud Shell.
Optional: If you want to use your own existing certificate, upload the certificate to Azure Key Vault.

Installation

Now you can start with the installation process. First, you will need to download the installation script from the following URL. Navigate to your home directory and download the file using PowerShell.

Download Windows Admin Center with PowerShell in Cloud Shell

# Navigate to your home directory
cd ~
 
# Download file
Invoke-WebRequest -Uri https://aka.ms/deploy-wacazvm -OutFile Deploy-WACAzVM.zip
 
# Expand Zip file
Expand-Archive ./Deploy-WACAzVM.zip
 
# Change Directory
cd Deploy-WACAzVM

After successfully downloading and unpacking the Windows Admin Center deployment script, you will need to modify a couple of parameters. I will use the default parameters to deploy a new Windows Server 2019 and generate a self-signed certificate. However, if you want to use other options, check out the script parameter list.

Configure Parameter

$ResourceGroupName = "demo-wac-rg"
$VirtualNetworkName = "wac-vnet"
$SecurityGroupName = "wac-nsg"
$SubnetName = "wac-subnet"
$VaultName = "wac-key-vault"
$CertName = "wac-cert"
$Location = "westeurope"
$PublicIpAddressName = "wac-public-ip"
$Size = "Standard_D4s_v3"
$Image = "Win2019Datacenter"
$Credential = Get-Credential
 
$scriptParams = @{
ResourceGroupName = $ResourceGroupName
Name = "wac-vm1"
Credential = $Credential
VirtualNetworkName = $VirtualNetworkName
SubnetName = $SubnetName
Location = $Location
Size = $Size
Image = $Image
GenerateSslCert = $true
}
./Deploy-WACAzVM.ps1 @scriptParams

This will deploy a new Azure virtual machine with Windows Admin Center installed and open the specific port 443 on the public IP address. You can find more install options and parameters to install WAC on an existing virtual machine or with an existing certificate on Microsoft Docs.

Deploy and Configure Windows Admin Center in Azure VM

After the deployment has finished, simply click on the URL or IP address and it will open the Windows Admin Center portal.

Windows Admin Center Running in Microsoft Azure

I hope this gives you an overview about how you can deploy Windows Admin Center in an Azure VM. If you have any questions, please let me know in the comments.

Aug222019August 22, 2019September 23, 20190 Commentby Thomas Maurer

Speaking at PolarConf 2019 in Helsinki

Posted in Cloud, Cloud Advocate, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure, Speaking, Thomas Maurer

Today I am excited to let you know that I will be speaking at this years PolarConf 2019 in Helsinki Finland, also known as the most northern Azure conference for IT professionals. PolarConf is a two-day, single track, conference focusing on Microsoft Azure and is organized by the Finland Azure User Group. PolarConf 2019 takes place from 16-17th of October in the Scandic Park hotel in Helsinki.

PolarConf is a two-day, single track, conference for all things Azure for IT Professionals, Architects and technology leaders. PolarConf will bring a world-class speaker lineup to Helsinki, Finland. Join us in Helsinki to hear the latest on cloud technology and tooling straight from the experts!

PolarConf 2019 is organized 16-17th of October in the Scandic Park hotel in Helsinki, Finland.
During the two fully-packed conference days, you will learn about the latest announcements, best practices and survival stories on the following topics:

Azure Platform, Tooling & Automation

Azure Case studies

Hybrid Azure solutions

PolarConf is built for modern technology professionals, who want to learn from experts speaking about their real-life production-level implementations, not slideware. PolarConf is a Finland Azure User Group event.

In my session, I will be speaking about Azure Cloud Shell.

PolarConf 2019

Mastering Azure using Cloud Shell, PowerShell, and Bash!

Azure can be managed in many different ways. Learn your command line options like Azure PowerShell, Azure CLI, and Cloud Shell to be more efficient in managing your Azure infrastructure. Become a hero on the shell to manage the cloud!

This will be my first conference in Finland, and I am super excited. I hope to see you there!

Aug052019August 5, 2019August 5, 20190 Commentby Thomas Maurer

Speaking at Techmentor 2019

Posted in Azure Stack HCI, Cloud, Events, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Azure Stack, PowerShell, Speaking, Virtualization, Windows Admin Center, Windows Server, Windows Server 2019

I am currently on the Microsoft Redmond campus for some internal meetings and training, during the same time, there will be the Techmentor 2019 Microsoft HQ conference in Redmond. I am happy to announce that I will be one of the speakers during that conference. Since I am already on the Microsoft campus it is great to take some time to speak about some cool Azure things. Techmentor 2019 is a 5-day conference from August 5-9, 2019 on the Microsoft Headquarters in Redmond.

My Sessions at Techmentor 2019

I will be delivering two sessions about Cloud Shell and Azure Stack, as well as being part of a panel discussion.

TechMentor

A Look into the Hybrid Cloud Lifestyle of an Azure Stack Operator

Microsoft released Azure Stack as an Azure appliance for your datacenter. Learn what Azure Stack is, what challenges it solves, how you deploy, manage and operate Azure Stack in your datacenter. Learn about the features and services you will get by offering Azure Stack to your customers and how you can build a true Hybrid Cloud experience. In this presentation, Thomas Maurer (Microsoft MVP) will guide you through the highly anticipated innovations and experiences during the Azure Stack Early Adaption Program and Azure Stack Technology Adoption Program (TAP). You will learn: How to integrate Azure Stack into your Datacenter How to operate Azure Stack and how it is managed How to troubleshoot Azure Stack installations

TechMentor

Mastering Azure Using Cloud Shell, PowerShell, and Bash!

Azure can be managed in many different ways. Learn your command line options like Azure PowerShell, Azure CLI and Cloud Shell to be more efficient in managing your Azure infrastructure. Become a hero on the shell to manage the cloud!

You will learn:

What cloud Shell is
Some new things in PowerShell Az
Tips and tricks on Azure command line options

TechMentor

Supercharging Hyper-V with quantum computing

Okay, I am not really talking about quantum computing, but hey there are some cool features in Hyper-V you should definitely know about! In this session, Thomas Maurer will talk about “hidden” Hyper-V features everyone should know about. This covers different features for Hyper-V on Windows Server as well as on Windows 10, like Containers, Windows Sandbox, WSL 2, VM Gallery and much more. Be prepared for a lot of demos!

TechMentor

Panel Discussion: The Future of IT

If something is certain in IT it’s change. With the current pace of getting new operating system versions twice a year and keeping the management tools around them up to date it’s no wonder one feels a little dizzy with the amount of things to learn. Take this opportunity to hear from industry experts what is most important to focus on and how to deal with this rapid change in real life. The panel includes experts on multiple technologies and topics and will include a Q&A portion to get all your questions answered.

Want to experience IT training at the mothership? Join TechMentor this August as it heads to Microsoft Headquarters for a full week of training, featuring our NEW full-day Hands-On Labs. I hope to see you there!

May282019May 28, 2019May 30, 20193 Commentsby Thomas Maurer

How to Install AzCopy for Azure Storage

Posted in Cloud, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure, PowerShell, Windows, Windows 10, Work

AzCopy is a command-line tool to manage and copy blobs or files to or from a storage account. It also allows you to sync storage accounts and move files from Amazon S3 to Azure storage. In this blog post, I will cover how to install AzCopy on Windows, Linux, macOS, or in update the version in the Azure Cloud Shell.

AzCopy v10 is now generally available to all of our customers and provides higher throughput and more efficient data movement compared to the earlier version of AzCopy (v8). Version 10 also adds additional functionality like sync of blob storage accounts and much more.

Install AzCopy

You can get the latest version of AzCopy from here: Get started with AzCopy

Windows (zip)
Linux (tar)
MacOS (zip)

Install AzCopy on Windows

To install AzCopy on Windows, you can run the following PowerShell script, or you can download the zip file and run it from where ever you want. This script will add the AzCopy folder location to your system path so that you can run the AzCopy command from anywhere.

 
#Download AzCopy
Invoke-WebRequest -Uri "https://aka.ms/downloadazcopy-v10-windows" -OutFile AzCopy.zip -UseBasicParsing
 
#Curl.exe option (Windows 10 Spring 2018 Update (or later))
curl.exe -L -o AzCopy.zip https://aka.ms/downloadazcopy-v10-windows
 
#Expand Archive
Expand-Archive ./AzCopy.zip ./AzCopy -Force
 
#Move AzCopy to the destination you want to store it
Get-ChildItem ./AzCopy/*/azcopy.exe | Move-Item -Destination "C:\Users\thmaure\AzCopy\AzCopy.exe"
 
#Add your AzCopy path to the Windows environment PATH (C:\Users\thmaure\AzCopy in this example), e.g., using PowerShell:
$userenv = [System.Environment]::GetEnvironmentVariable("Path", "User")
[System.Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable("PATH", $userenv + ";C:\Users\thmaure\AzCopy", "User")

Install AzCopy on Linux

To install AzCopy on Linux, you can run the following shell script, or you can download the tar file and run it from where ever you want. This script will put the AzCopy executable into the /usr/bin folder so that you can run it from anywhere.

 
#Download AzCopy
wget https://aka.ms/downloadazcopy-v10-linux
 
#Expand Archive
tar -xvf downloadazcopy-v10-linux
 
#(Optional) Remove existing AzCopy version
sudo rm /usr/bin/azcopy
 
#Move AzCopy to the destination you want to store it
sudo cp ./azcopy_linux_amd64_*/azcopy /usr/bin/

Authorize with Azure Storage

When you start working with Azure Storage, you have two options to authorize against the Azure Storage. You can provide authorization credentials by using Azure Active Directory (AD), or by using a Shared Access Signature (SAS) token.

It also depends on which services you want to use.

Storage type	Supported method
Blob storage	Azure AD and SAS
Blob storage (hierarchical namespace)	Azure AD
File storage	SAS only

Authenticate using Azure AD

To authenticate with AzCopy using Azure AD, you can use the following command

 
azcopy login

Authenticate using SAS token

To authenticate with AzCopy using a SAS token you can use this command as an example

 
azcopy cp "C:\local\path" "https://account.blob.core.windows.net/mycontainer1/?sv=2018-03-28&amp;ss=bjqt&amp;srt=sco&amp;sp=rwddgcup&amp;se=2019-05-01T05:01:17Z&amp;st=2019-04-30T21:01:17Z&amp;spr=https&amp;sig=MGCXiyEzbtttkr3ewJIh2AR8KrghSy1DGM9ovN734bQF4%3D" --recursive=true

To make things easier you can use Azure PowerShell to generate the SAS token for you. I wrote a blog post on ITOPSTALK.com about how you can do that. You can get the SAS token using the following Azure PowerShell command. If you are running Linux or macOS, you can find on this blog post, how to install PowerShell 6.

 
Connect-AzAccount
Get-AzSubscription
 
$subscriptionId = "yourSubscriptionId"
$storageAccountRG = "demo-azcopy-rg"
$storageAccountName = "tomsaccount"
$storageContainerName = "images"
$localPath = "C:\temp\images"
 
Select-AzSubscription -SubscriptionId $SubscriptionId
 
$storageAccountKey = (Get-AzStorageAccountKey -ResourceGroupName $storageAccountRG -AccountName $storageAccountName).Value[0]
 
$destinationContext = New-AzStorageContext -StorageAccountName $storageAccountName -StorageAccountKey $storageAccountKey
 
$containerSASURI = New-AzStorageContainerSASToken -Context $destinationContext -ExpiryTime(get-date).AddSeconds(3600) -FullUri -Name $storageContainerName -Permission rw
 
azcopy copy $localPath $containerSASURI --recursive

To learn more about SAS tokens, check out Using shared access signatures (SAS).

I hope this helps you to install AzCopy and configure it. If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment.

May082019May 8, 2019May 8, 20190 Commentby Thomas Maurer

Speaking at the Azure Saturday 2019 in Munich

Posted in Cloud, Cloud Advocate, Events, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure, PowerShell, Speaking

Azure Saturday Munich is a free community-focused Azure event dedicated to educating and engaging members of the local technical community. Azure Saturday draws upon the expertise of local Azure IT professionals, developers and solutions architects who come together to share their real-world experiences, lessons learned, best practices, and general knowledge with other like-minded individuals. With 30 speakers delivering 25 sessions in front of 500 attendees. I am happy that this year I will be speaking about the Azure Cloud Shell on the Azure Saturday 2019 on May 18 in Munich.

Azure Saturday 2019

Mastering Azure using Cloud Shell, PowerShell and Bash!

If you want to use your Saturday to learn about Azure, come by and I hope to see you there!

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My name is Thomas Maurer. I am a Senior Cloud Advocate at Microsoft. I am part of the Azure engineering team (Cloud + AI) and engage with the community and customers around the world. I am located in Switzerland. I am focusing on Microsoft technologies, especially cloud and datacenter solutions based on Microsoft Azure, Azure Stack and Windows Server. Opinions are my own.
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Tag: Cloud Shell

Connect Azure Cloud Shell to Virtual Network vNet

Requirements

Connect Azure Cloud Shell to a virtual network

Reconnect Cloud Shell

Run Azure Cloud Shell in Windows Admin Center

How to run Azure Cloud Shell in Windows Admin Center

Deploy and Install Windows Admin Center in an Azure VM

How to deploy and install Windows Admin Center in an Azure virtual machine (VM)

Preparation

Installation

Speaking at PolarConf 2019 in Helsinki

Mastering Azure using Cloud Shell, PowerShell, and Bash!

Speaking at Techmentor 2019

My Sessions at Techmentor 2019

A Look into the Hybrid Cloud Lifestyle of an Azure Stack Operator

Mastering Azure Using Cloud Shell, PowerShell, and Bash!

Supercharging Hyper-V with quantum computing

Panel Discussion: The Future of IT

How to Install AzCopy for Azure Storage

Install AzCopy

Install AzCopy on Windows

Install AzCopy on Linux

Authorize with Azure Storage

Authenticate using Azure AD

Authenticate using SAS token

Speaking at the Azure Saturday 2019 in Munich

Mastering Azure using Cloud Shell, PowerShell and Bash!

Follow Me

About

Get Updates

Sponsor

Sponsor

Sponsor

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