Tag: script

Nov122020November 12, 2020November 9, 20200Commentby Thomas Maurer
Connect a hybrid server to Azure using Azure Arc

Connect a Hybrid Server to Azure using Azure Arc

Posted in Azure Arc, Cloud, Cloud Advocate, Hybrid Cloud, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure, Thomas Maurer, Windows Server, Windows Server 2016, Windows Server 2019

New week, new Azure tip video!. This week we are going to have a look at how you can connect a hybrid server to Azure using Azure Arc. Azure Arc enabled servers enables you to manage and govern your Windows and Linux machines hosted across on-premises, edge, and multi-cloud environments. You’ll learn how to deploy and configure the Connected Machine agent on your Windows or Linux machine hosted outside of Azure for management by Arc enabled servers.

You can also check out the following links to learn more about Azure Arc enabled servers and how you can connect a hybrid server to Azure using Azure Arc.

Connect a Hybrid Server to Azure using Azure Arc

To connect a server running on-premises or at another cloud provider to Azure using Azure Arc, you can simply go to the Azure Portal to the Azure Arc Center and select Azure Arc enabled servers. Here you can click on the “Add” button.

Add Azure Arc Enabled Server

Add Azure Arc Enabled Server

There are currently two different ways to onboard a server. You can use an interactive script or an adding servers at scale method. With the interactive script method, you will need to provide credentials when running the script on a machine. With the onboarding at scale method, you will need to create a Service Principal Name with the minimum set of Azure permissions to onboard your servers. I highly recommend that in production environments, you o for the service principal method.

Select a method

Select a method

For demonstration purposes, we will go on with the interactive script method because this provides you with more details when you do it the first time. You will be provided with some of the prerequisites for Azure Arc enabled servers.

Add a server with Azure Arc

Add a server with Azure Arc.

You will need to provide some resources details, such as the Azure subscription, resource group, region for the metadata. You will also need to select the operating system type since the script you will get at the end will be a PowerShell script for your Windows machines and a shell script for your Linux servers.

Resource Details

Resource Details

You can now configure tags for your Azure Arc enabled server, or you can skip that step and do that later. In the end, you will be provided with a script, which you can run on the server you want to onboard to Azure Arc. This script will download the Azure Connected Machine agent, install the agent and register the server to Microsoft Azure.

Azure Arc Onboarding Script

Azure Arc Onboarding Script

This should provide you with a quick overview of how you can add a hybrid server to Azure using Azure Arc. Now the Azure Arc enabled server will show up as an Azure resource, and you can start using Azure management services for your on-premises server, like monitoring. If you want to learn more about Azure Arc, check out the recording of my session at Experts Live – Azure Hybrid Cloud Management.

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave a comment below.


Nov102020November 10, 2020November 9, 20201Commentby Thomas Maurer
Azure VM Run Command Run PowerShell Script

How to Run Scripts in your Azure VM using Run Command

Posted in Cloud, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure, PowerShell, Virtualization, Windows, Windows Server

You can access your Azure IaaS virtual machine (VM) in multiple ways like SSH or RDP, depending on your operating system and configuration. However, if you have issues with the RDP or SSH network configuration, you need to have a way to troubleshoot your virtual machine (VM). Luckily Azure offers you different management tools to work with Azure VMs for automation or troubleshooting. With the Run Command can run a PowerShell or shell script within an Azure VM remotely by using the VM agent. This scenario is especially useful when you need to troubleshoot operating system network configurations or user access configuration. For example, it can be convenient to reset RDP configurations on Windows Server virtual machines.

You use Run Command for Azure VMs through the Azure portal, REST API, Azure CLI, or PowerShell. Here are some examples:

Azure VM Run Command in the Azure Portal

You can run the command directly from the Azure Portal. In the menu of the Azure VM, you can select Run command. Here you can find some predefined scripts to troubleshoot your Azure VM. In the case of a Windows VM, you will find scripts like configuring RDP port or enable PowerShell remoting. But you can also run your custom PowerShell script.

Azure VM Run Command Run PowerShell Script

Azure VM Run Command Run PowerShell Script

For Linux VMs, you will find predefined options to run a Linux shell script or ifconfig to list the network configuration.

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Jul162020July 16, 2020July 16, 20200Commentby Thomas Maurer
Create Custom Script Extension for Windows - Azure Arc

How to Run Custom Scripts on Azure Arc Enabled Servers

Posted in Azure Arc, Cloud, Hybrid Cloud, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure, PowerShell, Windows Server

With the latest update for Azure Arc for Servers, you are now able to deploy and use extensions with your Azure Arc enabled servers. With the Custom Script extension, you can run scripts on Azure Arc enabled servers and works similar to the custom script extension for Azure virtual machines (VMs). There is an extension for Windows and Linux servers, which is a tool that can be used to launch and execute machine customization tasks post configuration automatically.

When this Extension is added to an Azure Arc machine, it can download PowerShell and shell scripts and files from Azure storage and launch a script on the machine, which in turn can download additional software components. Custom Script Extension for Linux and Windows – Azure Arc tasks can also be automated using the Azure PowerShell cmdlets and Azure Cross-Platform Command-Line Interface (Azure CLI).

Introducing Azure Arc
For customers who want to simplify complex and distributed environments across on-premises, edge and multicloud, Azure Arc enables deployment of Azure services anywhere and extends Azure management to any infrastructure.
Learn more about Azure Arc here.

How to run Custom Scripts on Azure Arc enabled servers

To run a custom script on an Azure Arc enabled server, you can simply deploy the Custom Script Extension. You open the server you want to run the custom script in the Azure Arc server overview. Navigate to Extensions and click on Add, and select the Custom Script Extension for Windows – Azure Arc or on Linux the Custom Script Extension for Linux – Azure Arc.

Add Custom Script Extension

Add Custom Script Extension

Now you can select the PowerShell or shell script you want to run on that machine, as well as adding some optional arguments for that script.

Create Custom Script Extension for Windows - Azure Arc

Create Custom Script Extension for Windows – Azure Arc

After that, it will take a couple of minutes to run the script on the machine.

Conclusion

The Custom Script Extensions for Linux and Windows can be used to launch and execute machine customization tasks post configuration automatically.

You can learn more about how Azure Arc provides you with cloud-native management technologies for your hybrid cloud environment here, and you can find the documentation for Azure Arc enabled servers on Microsoft Docs.

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave a comment below.


May052020May 5, 2020May 4, 20204Commentsby Thomas Maurer
Write PowerShell Code Online in a web browser using Visual Studio Codespaces

Write PowerShell Online using Visual Studio Codespaces

Posted in Cloud, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure, PowerShell, Visual Studio, Visual Studio Code

Last week the Visual Studio Services team announced a new service called Visual Studio Codespaces. Visual Studio Codespaces allows you to do cloud-hosted development for wherever you’re working. While the new services support many different programming and scripting languages, it also supports PowerShell. In this blog post, I am going to show you how you can write PowerShell code online in a web browser using Visual Studio Codespaces.

What is Visual Studio Codespaces

As mentioned, Visual Studio Codespaces (earlier known as Visual Studio Online) are cloud-hosted development environments, which are accessible from everywhere. I don’t want to go too deep into what Visual Studio Codespaces are since there are already great resources out there. However, I want to quickly give you an overview of the basics of Visual Studio Code spaces and how you can use them to write PowerShell code.

Visual Studio Codespaces gives you access to development machines, which can be cloud-hosted or self-hosted.

  • Cloud-hosted machines are machines running in the Microsoft Cloud, and you can take advantage of the power of that machine. In this case, you can use the web browser or Visual Studio Code to access that Codespace.
  • Self-hosted machines can be computers in your home, company, installed in the cloud using Azure VMs, or everywhere. Again, here you can use a remote machine using a web browser or VS Code to access that code space remotely.
Visual Studio Codespaces Overview

Visual Studio Codespaces Overview

This now allows you to have a powerful development environment that you can access and run from anywhere. I think that is pretty cool!

You can read more about the introduction of Visual Studio Codespaces here.

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Mar062020March 6, 2020March 15, 20203Commentsby Thomas Maurer
PowerShell ISE Mode in Visual Studio Code

How to use PowerShell ISE Mode in Visual Studio Code

Posted in Microsoft, PowerShell, Visual Studio Code, Windows, Windows 10

If you are writing PowerShell code, you might have realized that there weren’t really improvements to the PowerShell Integrated Scripting Environment (PowerShell ISE) in the last couple of releases. With PowerShell becoming more popular on cross-platform systems, Visual Studio Code (VS Code) becomes the editor of choice. However, by default Visual Studio Code has a different behavior than the PowerShell ISE. To make it even easier, the latest PowerShell extension for Visual Studio Code, now includes PowerShell ISE Mode. PowerShell ISE Mode in Visual Studio Code, helps you to replicate and enable the settings from the following Microsoft Docs article: How to replicate the ISE experience in Visual Studio Code.

The ISE was first introduced with Windows PowerShell V2 and was re-designed with PowerShell V3. The ISE is supported in all supported versions of Windows PowerShell up to and including Windows PowerShell V5.1.

The PowerShell ISE is no longer in active feature development. As a shipping component of Windows, it continues to be officially supported for security and high-priority servicing fixes. We currently have no plans to remove the ISE from Windows.

There is no support for the ISE in PowerShell v6 and beyond.

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Jul032015July 3, 2015July 3, 20150Commentby Thomas Maurer

Judge at the Nutanix Coding Challenge

Posted in Cloud, Hardware, Hyper-V, Microsoft, PowerShell, Virtualization, Web, Windows Server

Nutanix just announced the PowerShell Coding Challenge for your Nutanix environment. The challenge will be to build a script which solves a real world problem in these use cases: Provisioning/orchestration, reporting, data protection, disaster recovery and runbook automation.

Do you have what it takes to write the best script for a Nutanix environment? Find out by participating in the inaugural Total Recode challenge. This global contest gives you a platform for showcasing your best talent. May the most creative, badass coding guru win!

Want to get more familiar with the Nutanix product and test your script? Check out the Nutanix Prism APIs and our recently announced Community Edition software.

Nutanix Coding Challenge Prizes

You can win great prices:

  • Best Overall
    DJ1 Inspire 1 Drone (Valued up
    to $4000) or $4000 cash prize
  • Most Impactful
    Home Lab ($2,500 value)
    or $2,500 cash prize
  • Most Creative
    $2000 cash prize

And I am proud the be a judge in this contest with other great minds:

 

Nutanix Coding Challenge Judges

If you want to know more or join the challenge, check out the Nutantix Coding Challenge: Total Recode website.


Mar122015March 12, 2015June 26, 20199Commentsby Thomas Maurer
PowerShell

Get name of the PowerShell script file inside the script

Posted in Cloud, Hyper-V, Microsoft, PowerShell, Web, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows Server, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2, Work

When you create a PowerShell script you sometimes want to create some output for a log file for example. In many cases, it makes sense to use the script file name for the log file so you can easily see from which .ps1 the .log file was generated for example. To get the name of the PowerShell ps1. file you can use the following command from MyInvocation:

$MyInvocation.MyCommand

This will return the ps1. file object. To get only the name string you could use:

$MyInvocation.MyCommand.Name

To create a log file with the script file name you could use the following commands:

$path = Get-Location
$scriptName = $MyInvocation.MyCommand.Name
$scriptLog = "$path\$scriptName.log"


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    Thomas Maurer

    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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