PowerShell for Windows updates? Why would you want to do this other than the fact that it’s a cool thing to do? Well it’s fairly easy to do and can be easilly automated. Firstly you will need version 5 of PowerShell which is apart of Windows 10. Since version 5 you can now download and install modules online from the PowerShell Gallery. First thing you need to do is confirm the version of PowerShell you have: If version 5 or above, confirm you are running PowerShell as administrator and continue with: Then you will need to register to use the…
Category: Azure
Windows Server disk striping & disk performance in Azure – IOPS
A little while ago I had problems with a virtual machine and the disk performance in particular. On this occaision, this was for an Azure VM, however the following can be used on any Windows server physical or virtual server / public cloud or private cloud. I called Microsoft Support who helped me navigate through the popular disk performance tool Iometer, below are the screenshots which can be used as an example. Take note of the settings of the screenshots, it’s handy to use as a guide and a kick start if you are not familiar with Iometer. Disk Targets…
Azure Resource Manager – Multiple VMs behind a load balancer
This post is part 4 of a small series and stems from this post https://marckean.com/2016/05/17/azure-resource-groups-networks/ This post focuses on creating a two virtual machines into the Internal subnet of the target example architecture diagram below. These VMs will utilise inbound NAT rules from the load balancer. Remember, that the subnet based NSG rule/s will also be applied as the NICs of both machines will live on the Internal subnet which has an NSG attached to it. The PowerShell below, just simply edit / check the variables to suit before running it. This file contains hidden or bidirectional Unicode text that may be interpreted…
Azure Resource Manager – Single VM with an NSG
This post is part 3 of a small series and stems from this post https://marckean.com/2016/05/17/azure-resource-groups-networks/ This post focuses on creating a single virtual machine into the DMZ subnet of the target example architecture diagram below. This VM will have an NSG attached to its NIC. Remember, that the subnet based NSG rule/s will be applied first, so if there’s a match then the NIC based NSG will effectively be ignored. This file contains hidden or bidirectional Unicode text that may be interpreted or compiled differently than what appears below. To review, open the file in an editor that reveals hidden…
Azure Resource Groups – NSGs
This post is part 2 of a small series and stems from this post https://marckean.com/2016/05/17/azure-resource-groups-networks/ This post discussed Azure Resource Groups and splitting all IaaS Azure resources across multiple Azure Resource Groups for an easy way to delete targeted resources and easy of delegating admin. This post focuses on NSGs (Network Security Groups). A quick re-cap, with ARM based NSGs… …you can apply a NSG to both a subnet or a NIC The order of the NSG rules that are applied are NSG rules attached to a virtual network subnet and then a NIC. Once there’s a match, it takes that Each…
Azure Resource Groups – Networks
I recently finished delivering a technical presentation all about Azure in both Sydney and Melbourne at the Microsoft offices. It was a good turnout and something learnt that there is still segregation in IT teams even in today’s world of the cloud – there is still a large number of people that are IT network people!! Although I am, I fell into it by accident with network virtualisation on Hyper-V with converged networks and more recently Azure. Now I have posted lots around ARM (Azure Resource Manager) before, but I think I tended to focus on putting all resources into…
Azure VPN with Windows Server 2012 R2 – Routing & Remote Access
My other blog post talked about setting up an Azure Virtual Network along with a Local network gateway, Public IP address and Virtual Network Gateway in the same Resource Group. The other end to this is setting up the on-prem side of the VPN tunnel. As I am a Microsoft person, here is a PowerShell script below to setup the Azure site-to-site VPN tunnel on a Microsoft firewall – Windows Server 2012 R2 (Routing & Remote Access). Now all the network admins of this world will be cursing at me for using a Micosoft product as a firewall, but you know…
Azure ARM Virtual Networks and VPN tunnels / gateways
This post is part 1 of a small series and stems from this post https://marckean.com/2016/05/17/azure-resource-groups-networks/ The following is some PowerShell I put together that ends up setting up a full Virtual Network along with a Local network gateway, Public IP address and Virtual Network Gateway in the same Resource Group. This will set all this up into a separate Azure Resource Group on its own, which I recommend to keep the network part of your Azure environment separate, then you can easily deploy other resources in other Resource Groups, e.g. Virtual Machines which all can be attached to this Virtual…
IaaS limitations of the ‘new’ Azure Portal
There is some limitation of setting up VMs (virtual machines) using the new Azure portal http://portal.azure.com Let me explain some of these limitations now. Oh and I better mention that CSP licensing is all ARM ONLY! In other words, with CSP licensing there is no link to ASM at all, it doesn’t even give you the option of selecting (classic) in brackets. ARM Load Balancer: Creating virtual machines in the new Azure portal only allows you to create a new VM with an NSG (Network Security Group). If you want to create a VM with an ARM based load…
Azure VM (ASM 2 ARM) migration tool
During my travels in my in-depth work with Microsoft Azure and dealings with the fabulous rhipe partners, I have seen a much needed gap in the Azure market and developed a tool completely based on PowerShell over 700 lines long to help Azure customers move / migrate virtual machines effortlessly, seamlessly and painlessly from Azure’s old ASM based Azure Service Management environment to Azure’s new ARM based Azure Resource Manager environment. The tool takes into account every possible combination in which you can have an ASM based virtual machine setup. In case you don’t know, ASM is the classic (IaaS v1)…
Marc Kean 
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