Using Azure Resource Manager

In the new Azure Portal, you create all your resources in Resource Groups, there is also as part of the Azure SDK's a module called AzureResourceManager by default the module loaded for the Azure SDK is AzureServiceManagement. A blurb from one of the Azure documentation page reads:

"The Azure and Azure Resource Manager modules are not designed to be used in the same Windows PowerShell session. To make it easy to switch between them, we have added a new cmdlet, Switch-AzureMode, to the Azure Profile module."

Azure Resource Manager Commands

To get a list of all commands that are available for the AzureResourceManager module, you can run the command:

Get-Command -Module AzureResourceManager | Get-Help | Format-Table Name, Synopsis

This will return:

Name	Synopsis
----	--------
Add-AzureAccount	Adds the Azure account to Windows PowerShell
Add-AzureEnvironment	Creates an Azure environment
Clear-AzureProfile	Clears an Azure profile
Disable-AzureSqlDatabaseDirectAccess	Disables the option to directly access to an Azure SQL database (without auditing)
Disable-AzureSqlDatabaseServerDirectAccess	Disables direct access to all Azure SQL databases that use the audit policy of a SQL databa...
Enable-AzureSqlDatabaseDirectAccess	Enables the option to directly access to an Azure SQL database (with auditing)
Enable-AzureSqlDatabaseServerDirectAccess	Enables direct access to all Azure SQL databases that use the audit policy of a SQL databas...
Get-AzureAccount	Gets Azure accounts that are available to Azure PowerShell.
Get-AzureADGroup	Filters active directory groups.
Get-AzureADGroupMember	Get a group members.
Get-AzureADServicePrincipal	Filters active directory service principals.
Get-AzureADUser	Filters active directory users.
Get-AzureBatchAccount
Get-AzureBatchAccountKeys
Get-AzureDataFactory	Gets information about Data Factory.
Get-AzureDataFactoryGateway	Gets information about logical gateways in Data Factory.
Get-AzureDataFactoryHub	Gets information about hubs in Data Factory.
Get-AzureDataFactoryLinkedService	Gets information about linked services in Data Factory.
Get-AzureDataFactoryPipeline	Gets information about pipelines in Data Factory.
Get-AzureDataFactoryRun	Gets runs for a data slice of a table in Data Factory.
Get-AzureDataFactorySlice	Gets data slices for a table in Data Factory.
Get-AzureDataFactoryTable	Gets information about tables in Data Factory.
Get-AzureEnvironment	Gets Azure environments
Get-AzureLocation	Gets the resource types and the Azure data center locations that support them.
Get-AzurePublishSettingsFile	Downloads the publish settings file for an Azure subscription.
Get-AzureRedisCache	Gets details about a single cache or all caches in the specified resource group or all cach...
Get-AzureRedisCacheKey	Gets the accesskeys for the specified redis cache.
Get-AzureResource	Gets Azure resources
Get-AzureResourceGroup	Gets Azure resource groups
Get-AzureResourceGroupDeployment	Gets the deployments in a resource group.
Get-AzureResourceGroupGalleryTemplate	Gets resource group templates in the gallery
Get-AzureResourceGroupLog	Gets the deployment log for a resource group
Get-AzureRoleAssignment	Filters role assignments.
Get-AzureRoleDefinition	Filters role definitions.
Get-AzureSqlDatabaseAuditingPolicy	Gets an Azure SQL database's auditing policy.
Get-AzureSqlDatabaseServerAuditingPolicy	Gets an Azure SQL Server's auditing policy.
Get-AzureSubscription	Gets Azure subscriptions in Azure account.
Get-AzureTag	Gets predefined Azure tags
Import-AzurePublishSettingsFile	Imports a publish settings file that lets you manage your Azure accounts in Windows PowerSh...
New-AzureBatchAccount
New-AzureBatchAccountKey
New-AzureDataFactory	Creates a data factory.
New-AzureDataFactoryEncryptValue	Encrypts sensitive data.
New-AzureDataFactoryGateway	Creates a gateway for Data Factory.
New-AzureDataFactoryGatewayKey	Creates a gateway key for Data Factory.
New-AzureDataFactoryHub	Creates a hub for Data Factory.
New-AzureDataFactoryLinkedService	Links a data store or a cloud service to Data Factory.
New-AzureDataFactoryPipeline	Creates a pipeline in Data Factory.
New-AzureDataFactoryTable	Creates a table in Data Factory.
New-AzureRedisCache	Creates a new redis cache.
New-AzureRedisCacheKey	Regenerates the access key of a redis cache.
New-AzureResource	Creates a new resource in a resource group
New-AzureResourceGroup	Creates an Azure resource group and its resources
New-AzureResourceGroupDeployment	Add an Azure deployment to a resource group.
New-AzureRoleAssignment	Create a role assignment to some principals at a given scope.
New-AzureTag	Creates a predefined Azure tag or adds values to an existing tag
Remove-AzureAccount	Deletes an Azure account from Windows PowerShell.
Remove-AzureBatchAccount
Remove-AzureDataFactory	Removes a data factory.
Remove-AzureDataFactoryGateway	Removes a gateway from Data Factory.
Remove-AzureDataFactoryHub	Removes a hub from Data Factory.
Remove-AzureDataFactoryLinkedService	Removes a linked service from Data Factory.
Remove-AzureDataFactoryPipeline	Removes a pipeline from Data Factory.
Remove-AzureDataFactoryTable	Removes a table from Data Factory.
Remove-AzureEnvironment	Deletes an Azure environment from Windows PowerShell
Remove-AzureRedisCache	Remove redis cache if exists.
Remove-AzureResource	Deletes a resource
Remove-AzureResourceGroup	Deletes a resource group.
Remove-AzureRoleAssignment	Removes a role assignment.
Remove-AzureSqlDatabaseAuditing	Disables an Azure Sql database's auditing.
Remove-AzureSqlDatabaseServerAuditing	Disables auditing of all the databases that rely on the auditing policy of the given databa...
Remove-AzureSubscription	Deletes an Azure subscription from Windows PowerShell.
Remove-AzureTag	Deletes predefined Azure tags or values
Resume-AzureDataFactoryPipeline	Resumes a suspended pipeline in Data Factory.
Save-AzureDataFactoryLog	Downloads log files from HDInsight processing.
Save-AzureResourceGroupGalleryTemplate	Saves a gallery template to a JSON file
Select-AzureSubscription	Changes the current and default Azure subscriptions
Set-AzureBatchAccount
Set-AzureDataFactoryGateway	Sets the description for a gateway in Data Factory.
Set-AzureDataFactoryPipelineActivePeriod	Configures the active period for data slices.
Set-AzureDataFactorySliceStatus	Sets the status of slices for a table in Data Factory.
Set-AzureEnvironment	Changes the properties of an Azure environment
Set-AzureRedisCache	Set redis cache updatable parameters.
Set-AzureResource	Changes the properties of an Azure resource.
Set-AzureResourceGroup	Changes the properties of a resource group
Set-AzureSqlDatabaseAuditingPolicy	Sets an Azure Sql database's auditing policy.
Set-AzureSqlDatabaseServerAuditingPolicy	Sets an Azure Sql database server's auditing policy.
Set-AzureSubscription	Creates or changes an Azure subscription
Stop-AzureResourceGroupDeployment	Cancels a resource group deployment
Suspend-AzureDataFactoryPipeline	Suspends a pipeline in Data Factory.
Switch-AzureMode	Switches between the Azure and Azure Resource Manager modules
Test-AzureResourceGroupTemplate	Detects errors in a resource group template or template parameters
Use-AzureSqlDatabaseServerAuditingPolicy	Marks an Azure SQL database as using its server's auditing policy.

Step 0

As a step 0, lets open up everything we need.

Azure SDK

So to get started, you need to install the Azure SDK which you can get from the SDK downloads page. I am using Azure SDK 2.5 version for this post.

PowerShell ISE

Open the PowerShell ISE using Win + R and then %WINDIR%\system32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell_ise.exe. You can also use the standard PowerShell window if you want.

Azure Management Portal

Open and sign in to the Azure Management Portal (https://manage.windowsazure.com/).

Azure Portal

Open and sign in to the Azure Portal (http://portal.azure.com/).

Step 1

Let's start by getting the Azure Management Portal pieces out the way. In the Azure Management Portal, we will just be creating a new AAD user that we can use to automatically login through PowerShell. If you want to use a MSA, just leave the credentials bit off in Step 3 and you will receive a prompt for credentials at which time you can use MSA or AAD credentials and you can now move to step 2. If you want to create the new user, follow my other post Creating a new Azure Active Directory User to create a user for this demo.

Step 2

In the PowerShell ISE, we will kick off by switching the Azure SDK to use the resource manager module.

Switch-AzureMode -Name AzureResourceManager

Step 3

After we have switched to the AzureResourceManager module, we are able to use the commands that are part of it. Let's start off by adding our Azure Account we just created using the snippet below (I keep my username and password in txt files and reference from multiple sample scripts for ease of use but you can place them straight in the script if you wanted:

[string]$currentUsername = Get-Content "Z:\_PowerShell\Azure\currentUser.txt"
[string]$currentPassword = Get-Content "Z:\_PowerShell\Azure\currentPass.txt"
$secpasswd = ConvertTo-SecureString $currentPassword -AsPlainText -Force
$mycreds = New-Object System.Management.Automation.PSCredential ($currentUsername, $secpasswd)
Add-AzureAccount -credential $mycreds

This would then return the account added:

At this point, if you ran Get-AzureAccount, it will show you this account and any others you have previously added.

Step 4

Next we'll explore some meta data for Step 5.

Getting a Resource Group Template

We can run the command:

Get-AzureResourceGroupGalleryTemplate

and it will return a list of all the current resources group templates that we can create. For the list at the time of writing this post, you can refer to one of my GitHub Gists at https://binary-stuff.com/gist/ea0884f5ba00c62a83e4. We are going to be using one of the templates found around line 2220 which is the website and SQL database.

 

Get a List of Azure Resource Locations

When creating Azure Resources, you need to specify where those resources are located geographically. Now you could guess or Bing what the locations are or you could use the handy command...

Get-AzureLocation

..which will return you a list of every location that every resource is available in. This list as with the one above can be found as one of my GitHub Gists at https://binary-stuff.com/gist/87aad8bfbbbcd7421b83. From the long list of locations, we are just going to use West Europe for all our resources.

Step 5

At this point, we have all the information we need to create our resources using the resource manager in powershell, so we'll use the snippet:

$ResourceManagerTest = "ResourceManagerTest"
$AzureDataCenterLocation = "West Europe"
$administratorLoginPassword = ConvertTo-SecureString "$($ResourceManagerTest)DbP@ssw0rd"
                                 -AsPlainText -Force
New-AzureResourceGroup -Name "$($ResourceManagerTest)" `
                        -Location "$AzureDataCenterLocation" `
                        -GalleryTemplateIdentity Microsoft.WebSiteSQLDatabase.0.2.2-preview `
                        -siteName "$($ResourceManagerTest)Site" `
                        -hostingPlanName "$($ResourceManagerTest)Plan" `
                        -siteLocation "$AzureDataCenterLocation" `
                        -serverName "$($ResourceManagerTest.ToLowerInvariant())dbserver" `
                        -serverLocation "$AzureDataCenterLocation" `
                        -administratorLogin "$($ResourceManagerTest)DbLogin" `
                        -administratorLoginPassword $administratorLoginPassword `
                        -databaseName "$($ResourceManagerTest)DbName" `
                        -Verbose

This will then go off and create our website and database along with an Application Insights resource that we can use for our website when we deploy it. When the command finishes, you should see an output similar to the one below which because we specified the -verbose flag tells us the status of each resource created.

At this point, we really are finished with what the subject of the blog post is but we'll continue on to explore what we have just created, how we would have had to create it using the Azure Portal and how we can remove the resource group using PowerShell.

Step 6

Open the Azure Portal. The first thing you should notice is that you already have a notification and when you open that says that a deployment has succeeded.

Clicking on the success notification will open that resource group:

From here, you can use the resources 100% as if you created them in the portal.

Step 7

Before we see how we would have had to create those resources manually, let's remove the resource group from our subscription. To do this, we run the simple command below keeping in mind that the $ResourceManagerTest variable should still be set from the previous command in step 5.

Remove-AzureResourceGroup -Name $ResourceManagerTest -Force -Verbose

This will then proceed to remove the resource group, again because of the -verbose flag we don't get as much information, but rather just that it's deleting the resource group and then comes back when it's done.

Step 8

The last thing that I'll show on this post is how we would have to do this manually (or at least where to find template). Back in the Azure Portal, click new in the bottom left corner and then click on Everything.

Next, click on the Web category/section and then you'll see the Website + SQL option which is what we created:

Clicking on that option will give you a little information about the template and from here, you'd just click on create.

From here, you will configure the Resource Group Name, all the settings for your Website resource and SQL resource and then click create.

When that process completes, you will be in the sample place as that small PowerShell script gets you too. :)

Thoughts and Comments

If you have any thoughts or comments about any of the pieces of this post, please do share below.