Testdriving Windows Nano on Azure

Introduction

This week I wanted to have a simple slave machine that I could use for our CI/CD integration of our ARM templates. Here I was thinking of leveraging an A0 machine (10-11€/month) with Windows Nano on it, as this doesn’t need the biggest footprint. So out I went to deploy!

 

Deploying

When you want to deploy a nano system, just look it up like you would with (for example) a windows 2012 / 2016 machine… Type “nano” in the search bar.

I’m not going to elaborate on the deployment, as this is pretty straightforward and like any system deployment.

Azure Automation : Adding modules via Powershell

The last days I was troubleshooting an issue where I was unable to deploy modules to Azure Automation via Powershell… What did I want to do? Add the xActiveDirectory module to my Automation Account.

So let’s look at the documentation of the “New-AzureRmAutomationModule” cmdlet ;

-ContentLink<Uri>
Specifies the URL of the .zip file that contains a module that this cmdlet imports.

Which would give something like…

$dscActiveDirectoryLink = "<a class="linkified" href="https://github.com/PowerShell/xActiveDirectory/archive/2.10.0.0-PSGallery.zip" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://github.com/PowerShell/xActiveDirectory/archive/2.10.0.0-PSGallery.zip</a>"
New-AzureRmAutomationModule -ResourceGroupName $ResourceGroupNameAutomationAccount -AutomationAccountName $automationAccountName -Name xActiveDirectory -ContentLink $dscActiveDirectoryLink

So what was my logic here? I went to the project website and took the latest release (bundled as a zip file). Sounds great? It failed… Everytime I got the following error ;

Error extracting the activities from module xActiveDirectory-2.10.0.0-PSGallery. Extraction failed with the following error: Orchestrator.Shared.AsyncModuleImport.ModuleImportException: Cannot import the module of name xActiveDirectory-2.10.0.0-PSGallery, as the module structure was invalid.

After a hint by Joe Levy, it struck me… The command was expecting a nuget package! Underneath, this is also a zipfile. So when obtaining that package and using it for the -ContentLink, all went smooth!

 

Update with Code Sniplet (with help from Joe Levy!) ;

 

# Requires that authentication to Azure is already established before running

param(
    [Parameter(Mandatory=$true)]
    [String] $ResourceGroupName,

    [Parameter(Mandatory=$true)]
    [String] $AutomationAccountName,
    
    [Parameter(Mandatory=$true)]
    [String] $ModuleName,

    # if not specified latest version will be imported
    [Parameter(Mandatory=$false)]
    [String] $ModuleVersion
)

$Url = "https://www.powershellgallery.com/api/v2/Search()?`$filter=IsLatestVersion&searchTerm=%27$ModuleName $ModuleVersion%27&targetFramework=%27%27&includePrerelease=false&`$skip=0&`$top=40" 
$SearchResult = Invoke-RestMethod -Method Get -Uri $Url 

if(!$SearchResult) {
    Write-Error "Could not find module '$ModuleName' on PowerShell Gallery."
}
elseif($SearchResult.C -and $SearchResult.Length -gt 1) {
    Write-Error "Module name '$ModuleName' returned multiple results. Please specify an exact module name."
}
else {
    $PackageDetails = Invoke-RestMethod -Method Get -Uri $SearchResult.id 
    
    if(!$ModuleVersion) {
        $ModuleVersion = $PackageDetails.entry.properties.version
    }

    $ModuleContentUrl = "https://www.powershellgallery.com/api/v2/package/$ModuleName/$ModuleVersion"

    # Test if the module/version combination exists
    try {
        Invoke-RestMethod $ModuleContentUrl -ErrorAction Stop | Out-Null
        $Stop = $False
    }
    catch {
        Write-Error "Module with name '$ModuleName' of version '$ModuleVersion' does not exist. Are you sure the version specified is correct?"
        $Stop = $True
    }

    if(!$Stop) {

        # Find the actual blob storage location of the module
        do {
            $ActualUrl = $ModuleContentUrl
            $ModuleContentUrl = (Invoke-WebRequest -Uri $ModuleContentUrl -MaximumRedirection 0 -ErrorAction Ignore).Headers.Location 
        } while($ModuleContentUrl -ne $Null)

        New-AzureRmAutomationModule `
            -ResourceGroupName $ResourceGroupName `
            -AutomationAccountName $AutomationAccountName `
            -Name $ModuleName `
            -ContentLink $ActualUrl
    }
}

Azure : Traffic Manager in Classic mode vs Resource Manager

Introduction

Today I was setting up a Traffic Manager deployment in Resource Manager. I wanted a rather “simple” failover scenario where my secondary site would only take over when my primary site was down. As you might now, there are several routing methods, where “failover” is one ;

Failover: Select Failover when you have endpoints in the same or different Azure datacenters (known as regions in the Azure classic portal) and want to use a primary endpoint for all traffic, but provide backups in case the primary or the backup endpoints are unavailable.

Though I was surprised that the naming between the “classic mode” (“the old portal“) and “resource manager” (“the new portal“) were different!

 

“Classic Mode” / Service Management

So when taking a look at “classic mode”, we see three methods ;

They are described fairly in-depth on the documentation page, though in short ;

• Performance : You’ll be redirected to the closest endpoint (based on network response in ms)
• Round Robin : The load will be distributed between all nodes. Depending on the weight of a node, one might get more or less requests.
• Failover : A picking order will be in place. The highest ranking system alive will receive the requests.

 

“New Portal” / Resource Manager

When taking a look at “Resource Manager”, we’ll see (again) three methods ;

Though the naming differs… When going into the technical details, it’s more a naming thing than a technical thing. The functionalitity is (give of take) the same. Where the “Round Robin” had the option of weights (1-1000) before, this now seems a focal point. Where “Failover” was working with a list (visualizuation), you can now directly alter the “priority” (1-1000) of each endpoint.

The info when checking out the routing method from within the portal ;

• Performance: Use this method when your endpoints are deployed in different geographic locations, and you want to use the one with the lowest latency.
• Priority: Use this method when you want to select an endpoint which has highest priority and is available.
• Weighted: Use this method when you want to distribute traffic across a set of endpoints as per the weights provided.

 

TL;DR

Where the naming differs between the two stacks, the functionality remains the same ;

• Performance didn’t get renamed
• Round Robin became “weighted”
• Failover became “priority

Azure Resource Manager : Marketplace image requires Plan information in the request

Today I encountered an error I was unfamiliar with ;

New-AzureRmResourceGroupDeployment : 14:18:22 – Creating a virtual machine from Marketplace image requires Plan information in the request. OS disk name is osdisk.

After searching a bit, I encountered various posts regarding powershell deployment. Though, as I was using ARM templates (JSON), it was apparent that there is a difference in deploying regular OS images (like Windows, Ubuntu, …) and marketplace items like (Kemp, Netscaler, Barracuda, CheckPoint, …). The latter will require an additional parameter ; “plan”.

Let’s take a look at the following code sniplet…

 

    {
      "apiVersion": "2015-06-15",
      "type": "Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachines",
      "name": "[concat(variables('node1XVirtualMachineName'), copyindex(1))]",
      "plan": "[variables('node1XimagePlan')]",
      "copy": {
        "name": "virtualMachineLoop",
        "count": "[variables('node1XCount')]"
      },
      "location": "[resourceGroup().location]",
      "tags": {
        "displayName": "VirtualMachines"
      },
      "dependsOn": [
        "[concat('Microsoft.Storage/storageAccounts/', variables('vhdStorageName'))]",
        "nicLoop",
        "[concat('Microsoft.Compute/availabilitySets/', variables('availabilitySet1XName'))]"
      ],
      "properties": {
        "availabilitySet": {
          "id": "[resourceId('Microsoft.Compute/availabilitySets', variables('availabilitySet1XName'))]"
        },
        "hardwareProfile": {
          "vmSize": "[variables('node1XSize')]"
        },
        "osProfile": {
          "computerName": "[concat(variables('node1XVirtualMachineName'), copyIndex())]",
          "adminUsername": "[variables('node1XAdminUsername')]",
          "adminPassword": "[variables('node1XAdminPassword')]"
        },
        "storageProfile": {
          "imageReference": "[variables('node1XimageReference')]",
          "osDisk": {
            "name": "osdisk",
            "vhd": {
              "uri": "[concat('http://', variables('vhdStorageName'), '.blob.core.windows.net/vhds/', 'osdisk', copyindex(), '.vhd')]"
            },
            "caching": "ReadWrite",
            "createOption": "FromImage"
          }
        },
        "networkProfile": {
          "networkInterfaces": [
            {
              "id": "[resourceId('Microsoft.Network/networkInterfaces', concat(variables('networkInterface1XNamePrefix'), copyindex()))]"
            }
          ]
        },
        "diagnosticsProfile": {
          "bootDiagnostics": {
            "enabled": true,
            "storageUri": "[concat('http://', variables('vhdStorageName'), '.blob.core.windows.net')]"
          }
        }
      }
    }

In a regular deployment we would only need line 32. When working with marketplace items we’ll need to add the code for line 5. What’s the content of those two parameters? Let’s check the parameters section…

    "node1XimageReference": {
      "publisher": "[variables('node1XimagePublisher')]",
      "offer": "[variables('node1XimageOffer')]",
      "sku": "[variables('node1XimageSku')]",
      "version": "[variables('node1XimageVersion')]"
    },
    "node1XimagePlan": {
      "name": "[variables('node1XimageSku')]",
      "product": "[variables('node1XimageOffer')]",
      "publisher": "[variables('node1XimagePublisher')]"
    },

The documentation on this is quite scarce… Though the name for the plan isn’t something you can choose yourself. This is the SKU of the marketplace item! I hope this helped, as it got me distracted from my endgoal for a bit. 🙂