Automating Microsoft Azure Infrastructure Services

Preface

Who This Book Is For

This book is for the IT professional or developer who has been tasked with deploying workloads in Azure. At some point in your project(s), either you will be required to use PowerShell or the temptation to finally dive into automation will pull you in this direction. This book does assume that the reader has some experience with PowerShell or scripting in general and has previous experience with Microsoft Azure. Of course, there are plenty of resources on the Internet and other books from this publisher that can help guide you on the way if you lack experience in either topic.

What This Book Is About

This book is about automating and configuring Microsoft Azure Virtual Machines and Virtual Networks by using the Azure PowerShell cmdlets.

Overview of Chapters

• Chapter 1, Introduction, provides some background on where the Azure cmdlets came from and some insight into why automation in the cloud is critical.
• Chapter 2, Getting Started with Azure PowerShell, is about getting up and running with the Azure cmdlets, from installation to the configuration of your Azure subscription.
• Chapter 3, Virtual Machines, jumps right into creating and updating virtual machines in PowerShell.
• Chapter 4, Virtual Machine Networking, includes topic such as reserved IPs, ACLs, external load balancing, and network endpoints.
• Chapter 5, Virtual Machine Storage, is focused on storage as it relates to virtual machines. Topics such as images and disks, and uploading and copying virtual hard disks (VHDs) are covered in depth.
• Chapter 6, Virtual Networks, takes the reader through automating virtual networks and discusses other related topics such as static IPs and the internal load-balancer.
• Chapter 7, Advanced Virtual Machines, discusses more-advanced topics such as the provisioning engine, using virtual machine extensions, and the import and export cmdlets in conjunction with the async blob copy API.

Conventions Used in This Book

The following typographical conventions are used in this book:

Italic

Indicates new terms, URLs, email addresses, filenames, and file extensions.

Constant width

Used for program listings, as well as within paragraphs to refer to program elements such as variable or function names, databases, data types, environment variables, statements, and keywords.

Constant width bold

Shows commands or other text that should be typed literally by the user.

Constant width italic

Shows text that should be replaced with user-supplied values or by values determined by context.

Note

This icon signifies a tip, suggestion, or general note.

Warning

This icon indicates a warning or caution.

Using Code Examples

This book is here to help you get your job done. In general, if example code is offered with this book, you may use it in your programs and documentation. You do not need to contact us for permission unless you’re reproducing a significant portion of the code. For example, writing a program that uses several chunks of code from this book does not require permission. Selling or distributing a CD-ROM of examples from O’Reilly books does require permission. Answering a question by citing this book and quoting example code does not require permission. Incorporating a significant amount of example code from this book into your product’s documentation does require permission.

We appreciate, but do not require, attribution. An attribution usually includes the title, author, publisher, and ISBN. For example: “Automating Microsoft Azure Infrastructure Services by Michael Washam (O’Reilly). Copyright 2015 Opsgility, LLC, 978-1-491-94489-9.”

If you feel your use of code examples falls outside fair use or the permission given above, feel free to contact us at [e-mail].

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Acknowledgments

Writing this book has been a fantastic experience. I have learned so much about what it takes to make a coherent piece of writing (at least I hope I did), and I owe a lot to the people who pushed me through this with encouragement and just incredible hard work.

First of all, I would like to thank my wife for encouraging me to do this, and also for her and my children putting up with me during its completion.

Second, I would like to thank my editors at O’Reilly, Rachel Roumeliotis and Allyson MacDonald, for taking on this project and helping me through it.

Finally, I would like to thank my technical reviewers, who walked through the book multiple times with a fine-tooth comb and gave incredibly useful feedback:

• Aleksandar Nikolic—PowerShell MVP—http://www.powershellmagazine.com
• Michael Collier—Microsoft Azure MVP—http://michaelcollier.wordpress.com
• David Moravec—PowerShell MVP—http://powershell.cz

It has been fantastic working with all three of you, and I hope we can do this again!