Chapter 7. Advanced Virtual Machines
This final chapter will cover the advanced features of virtual machine provisioning, virtual machine extensions, remote PowerShell, and some tips and tricks I have found that can be very useful when managing virtual machines.
Virtual Machine Provisioning
The provisioning engine for Microsoft Azure Virtual Machines has several features that can be used in certain situations that have not yet been discussed in detail. For instance, you can provision Linux-based virtual machines, you can set the time zone, enable or disable Windows Update, enable or disable remote management options, domain-join a virtual machine, and even specify certificates to be automatically uploaded and deployed on your behalf.
Some of the provisioning settings can be specified with New-AzureQuickVM and some only when composing a virtual machine with New-AzureVMConfig, Add-AzureProvisioningConfig, and New-AzureVM. I’ll tackle these one at a time using the PowerShell cmdlets and highlight how they can be used.
Provisioning Linux Virtual Machines
One of the first surprises to many new users of Microsoft Azure is the extent of support for Linux-based virtual machines. Microsoft has embraced openness in its cloud-computing platform with support of Linux and various open source languages and developer frameworks. With this in mind, it should not come as a total surprise that the PowerShell cmdlets also have rich support for provisioning virtual machines based on Linux (see Example 7-1 ...
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