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Azure Cloud Automation Overview

February 11, 2022 by Faheem Javed
Category: Cloud

1.1 The Infrastructure-As-Code Practice

In the Infrastructure-as-Code practice, you define the infrastructure (that needs to be deployed in support for your solution) declaratively in code using some sort of domain-specific language (DSL)
- Azure cloud’s Resource Manager templates (ARM templates) are infrastructure-as-code declarative configuration files written in JSON; we will review ARM templates in a later lecture module
The infrastructure-defining code becomes part of your project similarly to how you treat your application code
- For example, just like your application code, you store the infrastructure-defining code in a source repository and version it

1.2 How Can Automation Help?

Automation can help simplify your solution deployment management and make the process reliable, consistent, and verifiable
Automation’s main focus is on frequent, human error-prone, and lengthy management tasks achieving this through the infrastructure-as-code approach
Automation gives you complete control during deployment, operations, and decommissioning of enterprise workloads and resources with assurances that the infrastructure is in a known and reliable state
Through automation, you can:
- Save operational time and reduce costs
- Enforce solution governance
- Ensure compliance
- Support DevOps practices

Notes:

As infrastructure becomes part of your solution delivery iterative process, the division between Ops and development will start to gradually disappear.

1.3 Azure Automation

Azure Automation [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-ca/azure/automation/] is a cloud-based automation solution that supports process automation, configuration management, update management, shared capabilities, and heterogeneous features
Automation on Azure is supported through these capabilities:
- Configuration management, including support for script authoring, automatic VM configuration updates
- Schedule and execute deployments
- OS updates and patching for Windows ® and Linux
- Cross-system orchestrate
Supports Azure and non-Azure environment integration
With Azure automation there is no upfront costs or termination fees — you only pay for what you have used
- For Azure Automation prices, visit https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/automation/

1.4 Azure Automation at a Glance

Source: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-ca/azure/automation/overview

1.5 Common Automation Scenarios

Azure Automation documentation lists the following common automation scenarios:
- Schedule tasks – stop VMs or services at night and turn on during the day, weekly or monthly recurring maintenance workflows.
- Write runbooks – Author PowerShell, PowerShell Workflow, graphical, Python 2 and 3, and DSC runbooks in common languages.
- Build and deploy resources – Deploy virtual machines across a hybrid environment using runbooks and Azure Resource Manager templates. Integrate into development tools, such as Jenkins and Azure DevOps.
- Configure VMs – Assess and configure Windows and Linux machines with configurations for the infrastructure and application.
- Retrieve inventory – Get a complete inventory of deployed resources for targeting, reporting, and compliance.
- Find changes – Identify and isolate machine changes that can cause misconfiguration and improve operational compliance. Remediate or escalate them to management systems.
- Periodic maintenance – to execute tasks that need to be performed at set timed intervals like purging stale or old data, or reindex a SQL database.
- Respond to alerts – Orchestrate a response when cost-based, system-based, service-based, and/or resource utilization alerts are generated.
- Hybrid automation – Manage or automate on-premises servers and services like SQL Server, Active Directory, SharePoint Server, etc.
- Azure resource lifecycle management – for IaaS and PaaS services.
- Dev/test automation scenarios – Start and start resources, scale resources, etc.
- Governance related automation – Automatically apply or update tags, locks, etc.
- Azure Site Recovery – orchestrate pre/post scripts defined in a Site Recovery DR workflow.
- Windows Virtual Desktop – orchestrate scaling of VMs or start/stop VMs based on utilization.

1.6 Service Integration Mechanism

Azure Automation employs serverless run-books that help integrate Azure and hybrid solutions
Developers can visually create run-books using PowerShell or Python to integrate Azure and publicly available services for deployment, configuration and management of your cloud solutions
The process automaton operating environment overview can be found here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-ca/azure/automation/automation-runbook-execution

1.7 Webhooks

Azure webhooks [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-ca/azure/automation/automation-webhooks] allow developers to process incoming requests and ensure continuous delivery and operations by triggering automation from:
- Azure Logic Apps, Azure Function, ITSM product or service, DevOps, and monitoring systems
The example on the next slide shows a typical webhook-based automation solution that is triggered by an external HTTP request

1.8 Example of Using a Webhook

Source: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-ca/azure/automation/automation-webhooks

1.9 Configuration Management

Azure Automation supports configuration management through:
- Change Tracking and Inventory
  - Used for change tracking across Linux and Windows ® VMs to prevent unwanted changes and raise alerts
  - For more details, visit https://docs.microsoft.com/en-ca/azure/automation/change-tracking/overview
- Azure Automation State Configuration
  - A cloud-based feature for desired state configuration (DSC) written as PowerShell scripts that can be used to apply configurations to virtual or physical machines from a DSC pull server in the Azure cloud
  - For DSC overview, visit https://docs.microsoft.com/en-ca/azure/automation/automation-dsc-overview

Notes:

DSC configurations are PowerShell scripts that define a special type of function. To define a configuration, you use the PowerShell keyword Configuration.

Example of a DSC script (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/scripting/dsc/configurations/configurations?view=powershell-7.1):

Configuration MyDscConfiguration {
    Node "TEST-PC1" {
        WindowsFeature MyFeatureInstance {
            Ensure = 'Present'
            Name = 'RSAT'
        }
        WindowsFeature My2ndFeatureInstance {
            Ensure = 'Present'
            Name = 'Bitlocker'
        }
    }
}
MyDscConfiguration

1.10 Azure Automation Shared Capabilities

Include:
- Shared resources,
- Role-based access control (RBAC),
- Scheduling,
- Source control integration,
- Auditing, and
- Tagging

1.11 Shared Resources

To facilitate the automation effort, Azure Automation offers a number of shared resources, including:
- Schedules
  - To trigger automation operations at predefined times
- Modules
  - Microsoft, third-party, community, and custom-defined cmdlets and DSC resources
- Python 2 and 3 packages
  - Python 2 and 3 runbooks
- Credentials and Certificates
- Connection information
  - You define connections in runbooks and configurations for use at runtime in modules
For more information, visit https://docs.microsoft.com/en-ca/azure/automation/overview#shared-resources

1.12 Azure Automation Compliance Certifications

Source: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-ca/services/automation/#features

Notes:

For a complete list of Microsoft compliance certifications, visit https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/compliance/regulatory/offering-home?view=o365-worldwide

1.13 Azure Command-Line Options

You can interface with the Azure cloud for the purposes of resource management and automation using two flavors of command-line interface:
- Microsoft PowerShell that comes with Azure-centric cmdlets, and/or
- Bash-based command-line interface (referred to in Azure documentation as CLI) offered through the az tool
Both command-line shells can be installed locally and used to remotely connect to your Azure cloud
The Azure portal comes with the built-in Cloud Shell environment that offers a choice of either command-line interface

1.14 Extending Azure Automation

Azure automation can be extended with additional features and products, such as
- security, and
- backup services

1.15 Summary

Automation is a critical activity to ensure consistent and repeatable deployment and management of cloud resources
One of the methods supporting successful automation activities is the Infrastructure-as-Code practice
Azure Automation offers a wide range of capabilities to support cloud-solution delivery automation