TechEd Australia 2014 being revamped

Well I had secretly been wondering how much longer TechEd Australia would be held on the Gold Coast, mostly as living in Brisbane this made it very accessible for me and I have enjoyed many years of attending the event as both an attendee and most recently as event staff. Now it is set for a revamp and will be more localized to other capital cities. Of cause there is going to always be positives and negatives to any change, but overall I see this as a positive evolution for the event in this fast changing world of IT.

For the full official details check out http://www.microsoft.com/en-au/teched/teched-2014/default.aspx

For those in Brisbane who are sad, don't worry there will be plenty of user groups and community events over the year to keep us fed with technology and provide great networking opportunities. One in particular I am looking forward to again this year is Infrastructure Saturday which I am sure will be bigger and better again this year.

Azure CmdLets which do not support ErrorAction WarningAction behaviour

While working on some scripts for an upcoming presentation I noticed some behavioral changes in the Azure CmdLets particularly with the use of the ErrorAction and WarningAction common parameters.  In my case I was using the Add-DomainControllerAndMemberServer.ps1 (available here) and found that it uses the -ErrorAction parameter for error handling when testing if azure services are already provisioned.

What i found is that the Get-AzureVNetSize cmdlet still throws an error when the Virtual Network does not exist even if you supply the ErrorAction parameter.

So running this:

Get-AzureVNetSite -VNetName "mlaveryvnet"

Or this:

Get-AzureVNetSite -VNetName "mlaveryvnet" -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue

Still results in the following error when the virtual network does not exist:

Get-AzureVNetSite : The specified virtual network name was not found: mlaveryvnet
Parameter name: VirtualNetworkName
At line:1 char:9
+ $vNet = Get-AzureVNetSite -VNetName "mlaveryvnet"
+         ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    + CategoryInfo          : NotSpecified: (:) [Get-AzureVNetSite], ArgumentException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : System.ArgumentException,Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Commands.ServiceManagement.IaaS.GetAzureVNetSiteCommand

Something to be aware of because even though the cmdlet may take the parameters from the command line, it doesn't mean it has been programed to include that functionality.

In my case I had to switch to the Get-AzureVNetConnection cmdlet as it does provide the functionality and as all I was doing was testing if the network exists this works. Your particular case may differ.

Get-AzureVNetConnection -VNetName "mlaveryvnet" -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue

PowerShell to seach Hyper-V VM Hard Disks for a specific VHD/VHDX file path

Sometimes people may not always place the VHD/VHDX files in the path your expecting them to be which if this is on a different partition it could cause some administrative overhead when managing the disk space on your host server. I was faced with this problem and came up with the following little PowerShell script to help search all VMs for an attached disk with the path of the VHD file I found.

$VHDToFind = Read-Host "Enter the Full Path to the VHD that you want to search for?"
Get-VM | ForEach-Object {$vmHDD = Get-VMHardDiskDrive -VMName $_.Name; if ($vmHDD.Path -EQ $VHDToFind) {Write-Host "VHD attached to $($vmHDD.VMName)" -ForegroundColor Green;}}

Infrastructure Saturday 2013 - PowerShell for Azure..... a perfect partnership

The last time I presented at Infrastructure Saturday was 2010 and it is certainly great to see how the event has continued and grown. A huge thanks to everyone from contributors, sponsors, speakers and organizers, it was clearly appreciated by everyone.

So this year my original session on Automating SQLwith PowerShell had to be squashed to allow Heidi (WardyIT) to present on SQL. After shedding a tear for only a short moment I regrouped and decided to talk about PowerShell and Windows Azure, another passion of mine. So a massive thanks goes to everyone that chose my PowerShell session over the SQL Session because naturally we had to be scheduled at the same time so that I was then competing against my own primary skill set... nah lets be honest PowerShell is overtaking SQL in that way for me ;)

Ok ok enough banter.

A number of people have expressed interest in the scripts demonstrated during the session so I thought I would provide a walk-through recap of the session. The links to download the "cleansed" versions of the scripts is at the end of this post.

Session Key Takeaways

In my experience, the Azure Portal is a great tool for exploring new features or once off tasks, but due to some annoyances, like the lag for the portal to refresh when back end tasks complete, it can be time consuming when doing very large tasks or more specifically regular repeated tasks.

PowerShell overcomes this :)

Oh and one more takeaway, be careful what is a news headline at the time of your presentation otherwise you may have a docked picture of our PM and another guy kissing show on your Windows 8 Start Screen (it was quite comical though).

Links

http://www.windowsazure.com

SDKs: http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/downloads/
Azure PowerShell: http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9811175&clcid=0x409
Scott Guthrie (ScottGu) Blog: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu

Session Demos

This is a walk through the PowerShell scripts that were demonstrated during the session.

For the first timers, you need to configure your PowerShell console session to be authorised to access your Azure subscription.

1. Download and install the Azure PowerShell pack. Reboot your computer to make it easier from here on out to import the module.
2. Import the Azure module with
   

   Import-Module Azure;
   

3. Next call the cmdlet to get the publish settings file. When you call this cmdlet it will launch your browser and ask you to log into your Azure subscription with your Live ID. It will then generate a new subscription management certificate and then prompt you to download the publishsettings file. Take note of the path where this file will be saved
   

   Get-AzurePublishSettingsFile;

   
   
4. Open the Publish Settings file and check that the Subscription ID matches the details of your management certificate as shown in the portal.
5. Next import the publishing settings file which will import the required certificate into your users certificate store.
   

   Import-AzurePublishSettingsFile –PublishSettingsFile "C:\Subscription-credentials.publishsettings"

6. You can verify that the certificate was imported correctly by traversing the certificate store:
   

   Get-ChildItem -Path Cert:\CurrentUser\my

   Or by retrieving a list of Azure Services available:
   

   Get-AzureService | Select ServiceName

Now that the management certificate has been imported you now need to bind to the Azure Subscription so that any subsequent cmdlets can authenticate without having to stipulate which subscription they should be executed against each time. This is very useful when you have more than one subscription within your organization.

1. Set the values in the variable block as required and then execute the script/command
   

   <#######################################################
   Variable Block
   #######################################################>
   
   # Subscription Information...
   $subscriptionName = "<<<<< Insert your Subscription Name here >>>>>"
   $subscriptionID = "<<<<< Insert your Subscription ID here >>>>>"
   $thumbPrint = "<<<<< Insert the Certificate Thumb Print here >>>>>"
   
   # Storage Account Information...
   $storageAccountName = "azurestorage" # Must be globally unique and all lowercase...
   $storageAccountLabel = "azurestorage"
   
   <#######################################################
   Select the Subscription
   #######################################################>
   
   #get the certificate definition from the certificate store via the PowerShell drive
   $certificate = Get-Item cert:\currentuser\my\$thumbPrint
   
   #set the context to the required subscription
   Set-AzureSubscription `
       -SubscriptionName $subscriptionName `
       -SubscriptionId $subscriptionID `
       -Certificate $certificate `
       -CurrentStorageAccount $storageAccountName
   
   #next mark the required subscription as active
   Select-AzureSubscription `
       -SubscriptionName $subscriptionName
   

TIP: The above could be configured as part of your PowerShell profile script to ensure this is set each time you start the Console, or added to a script file to easily execute, if working regularly with Azure through PowerShell.

Next we can look at the cmdlets available to us and other useful information available from within Azure:

1. Get all the cmdlets available from the Azure module

   Get-Command -Module Azure
   

2. Lets look further into the various commands available with
   

   #get all the "Get" commands
   Get-Command -Module Azure -Verb Get
   
   #get all the "Set" commands
   Get-Command -Module Azure -Verb Set
   
   #get all the "Restart" commands
   Get-Command -Module Azure -Verb Restart
   

3. When it comes time to deploy a VM we have the option of using some of the ready-made images, the following is an example of how to get a list of each of these:
   

   #Get the list of all windows images
   Get-AzureVMImage | where -property "OS" -EQ -Value "Windows" | select label,imagename | Sort -Property "label" | ft -AutoSize
   
   #what about all the images
   Get-AzureVMImage | where -property "OS" -NE -Value "Windows" | select label,imagename | Sort -Property "label" | ft -AutoSize
   

Platform as a Service

The first deployment demo during the session was to deploy a WebSite with a SQL Database. This demo used the Platform as a Service features of Azure. The script used for this deployment came from

1. Deploy the Web Site and SQL Database with the script by specifying the required parameters:
   

   #create the web site with a SQL Database (we have to use the location East Asia as Southeast Asia is not valid for web sites)
   .\New-AzureWebsitewithDB.ps1 `
       -WebSiteName "InfraSatWebSite" `
       -Location "East Asia" `
       -StorageAccountName $storageAccountName `
       -ClientIPAddress "***.***.***.***"; #validate this Client IP with WhatIsMyIP.com or the Azure Portal.
   

2. Once the deployment has completed we can see what was deployed. Firstly the new SQL Azure Server and Database

   #get the database server
   Get-AzureSqlDatabaseServer;
   
   #get the database(s) for the servers
   Get-AzureSqlDatabaseServer `
       | Get-AzureSqlDatabase;
   
   #get the database with extra info
   Get-AzureSqlDatabaseServer `
       | Get-AzureSqlDatabase -DatabaseName infrasatwebsite_db `
       | Select Name,CollationName,Edition,MaxSizeGB,Status,CreationDate `
       | Format-List;
   

3. We can also retrieve the information about the web sites created

   #get the website
   Get-AzureWebsite 

4. Thanks to the Azure management pack we can perform all sorts of operations on the services we created.

   #stop the web site
   Stop-AzureWebsite -Name InfraSatWebSite
   
   #start the web site
   Start-AzureWebsite -Name InfraSatWebSite
   
   #Default documents
   Get-AzureWebsite -Name "InfraSatWebSite" | Select DefaultDocuments;
   
   #Update the default document list for what we will publish
   Set-AzureWebsite -Name "InfraSatWebSite" -DefaultDocuments "default.aspx";
   

5. In my demo the next step here was to show how to deploy the web site code from Visual Studio through to the newly provisioned Web Site.

If you are testing this and wish to do some clean up of your Azure account following a deployment, the following commands are a good starting point.

#Remove the database (WARNING: This removes ALL databases provisioned on your account.... don't say I didn't warn you as there is no UNDO!)
Get-AzureSqlDatabaseServer | Remove-AzureSqlDatabaseServer;

#Remove the database (with a filter to exclude servers with a particular admin account)
Get-AzureSqlDatabaseServer | Where-Object -NE -Property AdministratorLogin -Value <adminaccountofserveryouwishtokeep> | Remove-AzureSqlDatabaseServer;

#remove the web site
Get-AzureWebsite -Name InfraSatWebSite | Remove-AzureWebsite;

#or
Remove-AzureWebsite -Name InfraSatWebSite;

#Check that it was removed
Get-AzureWebsite;

Infrastructure as a Service

During my session I demonstrated the automation of Infrastructure as a Service, unfortunately I cannot release the exact script that was demonstrated at the request of some colleagues until it is out of BETA. However there are plenty of scripts which perform some of the components of our complete solution.

The general concept of IaaS Automation is:

1. Deploy infrastructure components (e.g. Network, Storage, Virtual Machines, etc)
2. Simplify configuration and common tasks
3. Repetitive with minimal differences
4. Minimal user input (I recommend XML input files to achieve this)

Some existing example scripts that perform "some" of these tasks.

Deploy a Windows Azure Virtual Machine with Two Data Disks
http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/scriptcenter/Create-a-Windows-Azure-ec901cbe

Deploy Windows Azure VMs to an Availability Set and Load Balanced on an Endpoint
http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/scriptcenter/Create-Windows-Azure-VMs-244bd3cb

Deploy Multiple Windows Azure VMs in the Same Windows Azure Virtual Network
http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/scriptcenter/Create-Multiple-Windows-df9e95b7

Deploy a SQL Server VM with Striped Disks in Windows Azure
http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/scriptcenter/Create-a-SQL-Server-VM-in-0b8c6eed


At a time when the script demonstrated can be released I will update this post with references to that script.

PPT and Scripts Download

Get the PPT and the "cleansed" Scripts used during the Demos here.




Legal Stuff: As always the contents of this blog is provided “as-is”. The information, opinions and views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily state or reflect those of any other company with affiliation to the products discussed. This includes any URLs or Tools. The author does not accept any responsibility from the use of the information or tools mentioned within this blog, and recommends adequate evaluation against your own requirements to measure suitability.
 

PowerShell: Clearing the values within a HashTable without removing construct of Keys

I had an interesting questions posed to me today:

"Is it possible to clear the contents of all the values within a HashTable in PowerShell but retaining the Key names (i.e. the construct of the hashtable)."

This sounds perfectly acceptable but unfortunately there is not native way of doing this and only have the following options:
1) Set the HashTable variable to $null
2) Rebuild the HashTable from a definition with empty values

Neither of these 2 options are very dynamic or suited the application.

The solution I thought was to loop through the HashTable keys collection and modify the value of one of the entities, however that results in:

Collection was modified; enumeration operation may not execute.

Our solution is though to use the .Clone() method of the HashTable to build a copy of it in memory just for the sake of looping through it's entities. Here is my example code:

$hash = @{FirstName="Bob";LastName="Smith";Age="23"}
$hash

#create a clone of the hash table, this avoids the 
# "Collection was modified" enumeration error
$hash2 = $hash.Clone();

#loop through each key in the cloned hastable and update the 
# value in the original table
foreach($key in $hash2.keys){$hash[$key] = '';}

#clear the cloned hashtable to free memory
$hash2 = $null;

#just output the hashtable for verification in this demo
$hash

Migration Automation Toolkit (MAT) - Best video I have seen in a while

This would have to be the best video I have seen in a while. It speaks for it self.

View Video

Obviously you need a NetApp storage device for this toolkit to work. But it is built on PowerShell so what I see is an opportunity to take the scripts and modify them for your environment even if you don't have a NetApp device there would be some use in the scripts to help you get started in automating your migrations.

Read about it http://migrate.azurewebsites.net/

Office Online feature enhancements

Some new features in Office Online makes #getitdone much easier regardless of where you and your colleagues are, but most of all regardless of what device you are using

http://blogs.office.com/b/office365tech/archive/2013/11/06/collaboration-just-got-easier-real-time-co-authoring-now-available-in-microsoft-office-web-apps.aspx