To check the version of PowerShell you currently have installed, launch PowerShell, run the command below:
Get-Host | Select-Object Version
2) Now that you have the latest version of PowerShell installed, you will need to install the AZ module if not already installed. The command below will allow you to check if you already have the AZ Module installed including the version number.
Get-Module -Name Az -ListAvailable
3) If you already have the AZ module installed, the version will appear. If no version is installed, no results will appear after running the above command. You may find that you have more the one version installed.
To install the latest version, type the command below:
Install-Module -Name Az -AllowClobber
Please note, if you already have older versions of the Az Module installed, you may wish to add -force to the end of the command so that the module installs side by side with your existing versions. Such as:
Install-Module -Name Az -AllowClobber -force
Installing the module will take about a minute. Run the command below again to confirm the module has installed
Get-Module -Name Az -ListAvailable
If you have multiple versions of the AZ Module installed, the latest version will be used by default, unless you specify for an older version to be used.
Building a server in Microsoft Azure is simple and has become easier as Microsoft have made improvements on the portal over the years.
In this example, i’ll be building a Windows 2019 Server, so lets get started
Logon to your Azure Portal, search for virtual machines and click + Add
The below interface appears, select your subscription from the drop down list. If you only have the one, it will already be selected
Next, drop down and select a resource group.
What is an Azure Resource Group? A resource group is a container that holds related resources for an Azure solution. The resource group includes those resources that you want to manage as a group. You decide which resources belong in a resource group based on what makes the most sense for your organisation.
For the purposes of this demo, I’m going to create a new resource group
Next, lets give our virtual server a name and select a region. I have selected UK South
Next, I’m going to create this VM in a new availability set, because I will be building and adding another virtual web server and including it within the same availability set to provide for high availability. If you’re not interested in creating an availability set, you can skip these steps. But because it doesn’t cost anything to create an availability set, you may want to add the server to an availability set if you have plans of setting up redundancy in the future. You’ll obviously be charged for the second server, but the availability set is free. If you decide at this point you don’t require redundancy, but in the future change you’re mind, you will have to delete and recreate the VM to allow you to add it to a new availability set.
What is an Azure availability set? An availability set is a logical grouping of VMs within a datacenter that allows Azure to understand how your application is built to provide for redundancy and availability. Azure makes sure that the VMs you place within an Availability Set run across multiple physical servers, compute racks, storage units, and network switches. More info at: Azure Availability Options
Create a new availability set (I’m leave the defaults) and click OK. When you create another server, drop down and select an existing availability set. The below screenshot shows my new availability set. It’s worth looking into how fault domains and update domains function.
Next, select your Operating System. I have selected Windows Server 2019 Datacenter and a size of Standard DS1 v2 for this demo. The higher spec server the more it will cost you so ensure you select the correct server size depending on requirements
You may have noticed Azure Spot Instance. What is Azure Spot? Azure Spot offers unused Azure capacity at a discounted rate versus pay as you go prices. Workloads should be tolerant to infrastructure loss as Azure may recall capacity for pay as you go workloads. It’s recommended to use Azure Spot only if you’re testing and are happy for Microsoft to delete your VM without much notice. Never use this for production or even a test environment you require access to at all times.
Next setup your local administrator account and a strong password. For inbound public ports, I have set none. I will be accessing this server internally via RDP and don’t want to expose RDP to the outside world. If Bastion is available with your region, you could set it up so you can access your VM from within the portal. For more details on how to configure Azure Bastion, click How to Configure Bastion? If you have a requirement for public RDP to be enabled, lock down access to certain IP addresses and it’s worth setting up Azure Just In Time Access.
What is Azure Just In Time Access? Just-in-time (JIT) virtual machine (VM) access can be used to lock down inbound traffic to your Azure VMs, reducing exposure to attacks while providing easy access to connect to VMs when needed. The just-in-time feature is available on the Standard tier of Security Center
Click next, to configure disks. Select your disk types depending on your server/application requirements
You may also have a requirement to add an additional disk, such as a data disk. Don’t worry about creating a page file disk. You’ll get a temporary disk assigned by default
So here is what my disk configuration looks like. OS and a data disk
Click next to visit networking settings
Select your virtual network, subnet, a public IP if required and basic or advanced NSG. The common NSG is basic but will obviously depend on your company requirements. You can also control the NSG at subnet level within your VNET, or even route all traffic to an external firewall, such as a Paloalto firewall. It’s worth consulting with your networks team on security requirements.
When ready click next and configure management settings as required
I have set my machine to auto shut at 7pm. It’s only a test server and doesn’t need to be powered on after 7pm. Will save me on costs while it’s powered down.
Click next. If you have any requirements to install any extensions, such as Microsoft Antimalware, you can select here. If you’re not sure just yet, don’t worry about it, as you can select extensions after the VM build. It’s worth taking a look at the available extensions though. Click Next when ready
Create tags if required. Explanation of tags below
And click review and create
You’ll receive a notification after the VM has been built
I hope this post was useful. Feel free to comment below if you have any further questions.
This blog post will go through the process of creating an Azure Log Analytics workspace and connecting a test azure virtual server to the Log Analytics workspace. We will then setup the work space to collect System event logs from the test Azure VM.
1) Login to the Azure Portal
2) Search and select Log Analytics workspaces
3) Click Create Log Analytics workspace
4) Configure: – Give your new Log Analytics workspace a name – Select your subscription – Select a Resource Group – Select Location – Pricing Tier (Only one pricing Tier exists as of the year 2018). At the time of writing this blog post, the one available Tier was named Pay-as-you-go (Per GB 2018)
5) Click OK
6) Now that you have created your Log Analytics workspace, let’s join a VM to this new work space
Note that adding servers to the work space will automatically deploy a monitoring extension (agent) to the server
7) Click your new Log Analytics workspace
8) From the left pane under Workspace Data Sources, click Virtual Machines. As you can see from the screenshot, you can also connect other resources to your workspace
Note: Workspaces work across different regions, so you could add servers to a workspace no matter what region they are located in.
9) As you can see from the right pane, I have two virtual servers and the Log Analytics Connection is showing as not connected
10) Click a VM you wish to add to this work space (Ensure the VM is powered on)
11) As you can see from the below screen shot, the server is not connected to the work space, but we have the option to connect.
12) Click Connect
13) Wait for the virtual server to connect (A monitoring agent (Extension) is being deployed to the virtual server)
14) Now that the machine is connected to your workspace, the status is displayed as below. If you wish to disconnect, click disconnect.
Note: Now that the extension agent is deployed, you will find that the monitoring agent has been deployed to the VM. Locate the VM under virtual machines and click extensions from the left pane. The screenshot below shows the MicrosoftMonitoringAgent has been provisioned successfully.
15) If we go back to our workspace, we’ll find the server is now showing as a connection of this workspace along with a green tick.
16) Now, let’s enable logging for this workspace. Note that these logs will apply for all resources attached to this resource, so if you have different logging requirements for different resources, create different work spaces. You could also complete this step straight after the Logs Analytics Workspace has been deployed.
17) Click on your Log Analytics Workspace, and click Advanced Settings from the left pane.
18) The screen below will appear
Note: If you wish to connect physical servers to your Log Analytics Workspace, you can do so by downloading the required agent.
19) Click Data
20) A few different options appear which may be of interest to you. For this demo let’s click Windows Event Logs. Click the plus icon (blue box) to the right of the screen
21) For this demo, we will monitor the system logs, type system into the text box, select system and click the plus icon located within the blue box.
22) All logs are selected by default. You can select the logs as per your requirements.
Login to you Azure Portal and locate the storage account you wish to prevent access to via http
Click configuration from the left pane, and then from the right pane, switch Secure Transfer Required to enabled, and click save
If you wish to secure your storage account further, lock down your storage account so only certain networks are able to access it. The default setting is All networks (including the internet, can access this storage account)
To lock down your storage account to a particular VNET or even a IP address, click Firewalls and Virtual Networks from the left pane
Click selected networks, and then click the link + Add existing virtual network, or if you wish to lock down the storage account to an IP address, scroll down a little further within your Azure Portal
Select your VNET, Subnet and click enable
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