Azure on Anything About IT

Users can create AzureAD tenants

Tue, 22 Nov 2022 22:13:09 +0000

Hello there,

In this blog post we look at a setting within the Azure AD portal: “Users can create Azure AD tenants”. Unfortunately, this setting is enabled by default. Most organizations will probably want to turn this off. You can find it in the Azure AD portal under Settings > Users > User settings > Tenant creation.

Yes allows default users to create Azure AD tenants. No allows only users with the Global Administrator or Tenant Creator roles to create Azure AD tenants. Anyone who creates a tenant becomes the Global Administrator for that tenant.

How to deploy your jump host in Azure

Sun, 29 Mar 2020 14:49:33 +0000

Due to the current CODV 19 pandemic, governments are urging their citizens to stay at home. For many people this means finding alternative ways to continue their work from home. This article is primarily aimed at IT administrators or IT consultants who do not have an existing solution in place and who are looking for a simple but secure solution to access their IT infrastructure remotely.

When saying existing solutions, I’m referring to remote access solutions like Citrix, Windows Virtual Desktop or corporate owned and security hardened Windows 10 notebooks with a VPN client, However not all companies have such solutions in place because maybe until recently there was no need for people to work remotely. With COVD 19 this all changed overnight.

Backup Office 365 sign-in data with Azure Log Analytics and Logic App

Fri, 16 Mar 2018 19:59:59 +0000

The Office 365 solution in Operations Management Suite (OMS) allows you to monitor your Office 365 environment in Log Analytics. Like with any solution that you setup in OMS you have to think of the data retention time.

At present the maximum retention time can be set to two years, but this of course will affect your Azure billing. In today’s blog post I walk you through a possible solution how to backup just a subset of data into a custom log. The idea is that you can keep the retention period for the large amount of data low and only keep the data that is important for you for a longer period. The solution uses Azure Log Analytics and Azure Logic App Services.

How to get started with Azure log Analytics

Sun, 11 Mar 2018 16:55:36 +0000

If you’re interested in getting your hands dirty with Azure Log Analytics, here’s a few resources and tips on how to get started.

**The Video’s **

If you’re looking for some imagination of what Azure Log Analytics is all about and what you can do with it, here’s a couple of videos I recommend watching.

Azure Log Analytics (13 minutes) https://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Azure-Friday/Azure-Log-Analytics?ocid=player
What’s changed in Azure Log Analytics? (5 minutes) https://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/Azure/Whats-changed-in-Azure-Log-Analytics
The improved Azure Log Analytics: A powerful query language with machine learning, and more (1 hour) https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Ignite/Microsoft-Ignite-Orlando-2017/BRK3269

Data Collection Tier in Azure Security Center

Sun, 25 Feb 2018 17:22:05 +0000

Within the Azure Security Center, Security Policy node, you can select a workspace and there define the data collection configuration for security events.

All Events
Common
Minimal
None

More details about the Azure Data Collection and the data collection tier can be found here. The page also has a list of all the Event IDs that are being collected within each tier.

To better understand the exact meaning of each Event ID, I’ve created the below lists containing the Event ID, Description, Event Provider and Event Level information.

OMS Security and Audit Baseline Assessment

Mon, 19 Feb 2018 20:53:31 +0000

The Microsoft Operations and Management Suite, Security and Audit Solution includes a Baseline Assessment component. The Baseline configuration definition includes a set of Registry, audit policy and security policy settings rules that are recommended to configure to achieve a secure operating environment.

Within the Console we get an overview of “Rules” that have failed, because the servers don’t have the recommended configuration applied. While looking at this, I wondered where I can find the complete set of rules that are used when performing the baseline assessment.

Creating and Managing Azure Storage Tables with PowerShell

Sat, 01 Jul 2017 23:36:39 +0000

Today’s mission was to get more familiar with Azure Storage Tables and to manage them with PowerShell. On GitHub I found the AzureTableEntity module from Tao Yang. Below are a number of code snippets I used to get my hands dirty with Azure Storage tables and the module.

Install the Module

Install-Module -Name AzureTableEntity

Next we create an Azure Resource Group and an Azure Storage Account

# Create ResourceGroup
$Location = "Westeurope"
$ComputerInventory_ResourceGroup = "rg_CompComputerInventory"
New-AzureRmResourceGroup -Name $ComputerInventory_ResourceGroup -Location $Location
# Create StorageAccount
$SkuName = "Standard_LRS"
$ComputerInventory_StorageAccountName = "sacomputerinventory"
New-AzureRmStorageAccount -ResourceGroupName $ComputerInventory_ResourceGroup -Name $ComputerInventory_StorageAccountName -SkuName "$SkuName" -Location $Location,
```powershell
We will need the Storage Account key later so let’s get that one as well.

```powershell
# Retrieve the first StorageAccountAccessKey
$StorageAccount = Get-AzureRmStorageAccount -ResourceGroupName $ComputerInventory_ResourceGroup -Name $ComputerInventory_StorageAccountName
$StorageAccountAccessKey = (Get-AzureRmStorageAccountKey -ResourceGroupName $ComputerInventory_ResourceGroup -Name $ComputerInventory_StorageAccountName).Value[0]
```powershell

Next we create a new Table with the name “Computerinventory”

```powershell
#Create Table
$TableName = "ComputerInventory"
$context = New-AzureStorageContext -StorageAccountName $ComputerInventory_StorageAccountName -StorageAccountKey $StorageAccountAccessKey
New-AzureStorageTable -Name $TableName -Context $context
```powershell
Now that we have the table created, we can start adding data to it, let’s start with adding just one row first.

```powershell
# Add one entry
     $data = @{
     RowKey = ([guid]::NewGuid().tostring())
     PartitionKey = "Inventory"
     ComputerName = "Computer000001"
     Location = "Amsterdam"
     dtDate = [datetime]::UtcNow
     }
New-AzureTableEntity -StorageAccountName $ComputerInventory_StorageAccountName -StorageAccountAccessKey $StorageAccountAccessKey -TableName $TableName -Verbose -Entities $data
```powershell

Let’s take a look what’s in the table now

```powershell
$querystring = "(PartitionKey eq 'Inventory')"
$result = Get-AzureTableEntity -TableName $tableName -StorageAccountName $ComputerInventory_StorageAccountName -StorageAccountAccessKey $StorageAccountAccessKey  -QueryString $querystring -ConvertDateTimeFields $true -GetAll $true -Verbose
$result
```powershell
![image](images/image_thumb.png)

Next let’s add some more data to it, the below code creates some random computer inventory data.

# Generate some demo data for PC inventory

 

```powershell
   $locations = @("Amsterdam","Paris","Stockholm","London","New York","Seatle","Singapure","Hong Kong","The Hague","Barcelona","Madrid","Stockholm","Rome")
     $data = @()
     $count = 2
      While ($count -le 100)
      {
         $obj = @{
             RowKey = ([guid]::NewGuid().tostring())
             PartitionKey = "Inventory"
             ComputerName = "Computer" + $count.ToString("000000")
             Location = ($locations)[(Get-Random -Minimum 0 -Maximum $locations.Count )]
             dtDate = [datetime]::UtcNow
         }
         $data += (New-Object -TypeName PSCustomObject -Property $obj)
         $count++
     }
```powershell

# Add rows to Azure Storage Table

```powershell
New-AzureTableEntity -StorageAccountName $ComputerInventory_StorageAccountName -StorageAccountAccessKey $StorageAccountAccessKey -TableName $TableName -Verbose -Entities $data

```powershell
If all went fine, we should now have all the data in the table.

```powershell
$querystring = "(PartitionKey eq 'Inventory')"
$result = Get-AzureTableEntity -TableName $tableName -StorageAccountName $ComputerInventory_StorageAccountName -StorageAccountAccessKey $StorageAccountAccessKey  -QueryString $querystring -ConvertDateTimeFields $true -GetAll $true -Verbose
$result.Count
$result | Group-Object Location
```powershell

We now have 100 records in the table, with “**11**” computers located in Amsterdam

![image](images/image_thumb-1.png)

Now let’s look at Computer000001

```powershell
$querystring = "(ComputerName eq 'Computer000001')"
$result = Get-AzureTableEntity -TableName $tableName -StorageAccountName $ComputerInventory_StorageAccountName -StorageAccountAccessKey $StorageAccountAccessKey  -QueryString $querystring -ConvertDateTimeFields $true -GetAll $true -Verbose
$result
```powershell
![image](images/image_thumb-2.png)

It’s located in Amsterdam. Now let’s have a look at how to update a record, let’s say we want to change it to “Rotterdam”

```powershell
$NewLoczation = "Rotterdam"
$data = @{
PartitionKey = $result.PartitionKey
RowKey       = $result.RowKey
Location = $NewLoczation
ComputerName = $result.ComputerName
dtDate = $result.dtDate
}
Update-AzureTableEntity -StorageAccountName $ComputerInventory_StorageAccountName -StorageAccountAccessKey $StorageAccountAccessKey -TableName $TableName -Entities $data
```powershell

Let's retrieve the record again.

 

```powershell
$querystring = "(ComputerName eq 'Computer000001')"
$result = Get-AzureTableEntity -TableName $tableName -StorageAccountName $ComputerInventory_StorageAccountName -StorageAccountAccessKey $StorageAccountAccessKey  -QueryString $querystring -ConvertDateTimeFields $true -GetAll $true -Verbose
$result
```powershell
and there we go, it's now registered in Rotterdam.

![image](images/image_thumb-3.png)

Let’s query the entire database again.

```powershell
$querystring = "(PartitionKey eq 'Inventory')"
$result = Get-AzureTableEntity -TableName $tableName -StorageAccountName $ComputerInventory_StorageAccountName -StorageAccountAccessKey $StorageAccountAccessKey  -QueryString $querystring -ConvertDateTimeFields $true -GetAll $true -Verbose
$result.Count
$result | Group-Object Location
```powershell

![image](images/image_thumb-4.png)

and finally, let’s remove the Computer000001

I query the information again, as i will re-use the return values to build the remove properties.

```powershell
$querystring = "(ComputerName eq 'Computer000001')"
$result = Get-AzureTableEntity -TableName $tableName -StorageAccountName $ComputerInventory_StorageAccountName -StorageAccountAccessKey $StorageAccountAccessKey  -QueryString $querystring -ConvertDateTimeFields $true -GetAll $true -Verbose
$Remove = @{
PartitionKey = $result.PartitionKey
RowKey = $result.RowKey
Computername = $result.ComputerName
}
Remove-AzureTableEntity -StorageAccountName $ComputerInventory_StorageAccountName -StorageAccountAccessKey $StorageAccountAccessKey -TableName $TableName -Entities $Remove

Deploying ConfigMgr Current Branch in Azure Dev Test Lab

Fri, 10 Feb 2017 21:36:02 +0000

Remember the days when you spend hours if not days just to get a lab environment in place and any time you wanted to use the environment again, you spend another couple of hours to get It updated. About 3 years ago I started to make more use of Azure based compute to run my virtual machines, that I use for technology learning and research activities. Initially created the virtual machines through the portal, but then soon started to use Azure Resource Manager based provisioning techniques and PowerShell which speeded up provisioning times quite a bit.

How to link an OMS Workspace with an Azure Automation Account

Thu, 09 Feb 2017 21:14:19 +0000

When adding solutions to your OMS workspace you might get prompted to specify an Azure Automation account which then results in a link being created between the OMS workspace and the Azure Automation account. Now let’s assume you don’t need a specific OMS solution but you still want to create a link to an Automation account. While there is an “unlink workspace” option in the Azure portal, there is no “link workspace option” .

OMS Log Analytics HTTP Data Collector API – Work notes

Wed, 08 Feb 2017 13:08:44 +0000

I believe that the Microsoft Operations Management Suite is yet another example of how cool Cloud based solutions can be. Instead of first having to spin up an entire backend infrastructure before you can actually start collecting data, with the Microsoft Operations Management Suite you can directly start focusing on the task of collecting and visualizing your data. This blog post is basically a summary of my notes and scripts that I created while exploring the OMS Log Analytics HTTP Data Collector API, that allows you to submit any type of data to an OMS Workspace.

Retrieve Azure Virtual Machine Size information with PowerShell

Tue, 07 Feb 2017 19:46:07 +0000

One important topic to consider when deploying virtual machines in Azure is the size of the virtual machine as this affects the pricing, but beware that not only virtual machine sizing has a pricing impact other factors like storage and optional features like IP address options add to the costs as well.

A good starting point to get an understanding of virtual machine costs is the Azure pricing calculator: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-in/pricing/calculator/

Be aware that when selecting SSD disks, storage costs will be noticeable higher than when using HDD disks. To get a better understanding of the available Azure virtual machine sizes I strongly recommend to the read the following documentation:

Select-MyAzureRmSubscription

Tue, 07 Feb 2017 15:08:07 +0000

I have multiple Azure subscriptions linked to my account, so anytime I connect to Azure in PowerShell I have to make sure i am working in the right context. To simplify this I wrote a little helper function called Select-MyAzureRmSubscription.

After entering the -SubscriptionName parameter the script enumerates alll the subscriptions I have access to and generates a dynamic parameter option.

Script location on GitHub: https://github.com/alexverboon/posh/blob/master/Azure/Utilities/select-MyAzureRmSubscription.ps1

PowerShell Script - Get-MsolUserInformation

Sun, 18 Dec 2016 18:27:57 +0000

The Get-MsolUserInformation cmdlet provides an easy way to retrieve all users that are a member or guest and/or are registered in Azure Directory or Active Directory.

Clean up unused Azure Resources with PowerShell

Sun, 02 Oct 2016 00:25:26 +0000

Today when I opened my Azure portal I had a little surprise. The monthly MSDN subscription credit was much lower as I expected it to be. Did I eventually forget to turn off a virtual machine? Curious to find out where the cost had come from, I drilled into the subscription details and noticed that the higher costs had come from the Premium storage that I had used recently to deploy a virtual machine using an SSD disk instead of a HDD disk. But still it wasn’t clear why just that one virtual machine would be that expensive, so i drilled into the premier storage account and noticed that there were several orphaned VHD disks there. A clean up was required.

Creating a Virtual Network using Azure Resource Manager – Part 2

Tue, 01 Mar 2016 14:50:01 +0000

In the previous article (Part1) I walked through the steps of creating a Virtual Network using Azure Resource Manager and Visual Studio. In this article, we’ll look at using the Azure PowerShell cmdlets the some options for using parameters.

For this walkthrough you need the following:

An Azure Subscription that allows you to deploy resources
Azure PowerShell 1.0 or great, download and installation details can be found here

First login to Azure using the Login-AzureRmAccount command.

Creating a Virtual Network using Azure Resource Manager – Part 1

Mon, 29 Feb 2016 22:41:51 +0000

A few weeks ago I wondered why in the Azure Portal some of the resources where flagged as “classic”. The article Understanding Resource Manager deployment and classic deployment provided the answer I was looking for and was the start of an interesting journey into Azure Resource Manager.

If you haven’t heard of Azure Resource Manager yet, I highly recommend reading the Azure Resource Manager overview or watch the Introduction to Azure Resource Manager video available on Channel9 or Deep Dive into Azure Resource Manager Scenarios and Patterns on MVA.

A little helper script for the Azure Set-AzureRmVMSourceImage cmdlet

Thu, 11 Feb 2016 23:00:48 +0000

To keep a long story short, today i started looking into Azure PowerShell and Azure Resource Manager and quickly found out that if I wanted to make use of ARM, i have to change some scripts I have used so far to deploy my Azure VMs. More on that in a later post.

One cmdlet that I find paticularely annoying to use is Set-AzureRmVMSourceImage as it has a couple of mandatory parameters and to find the right values for these, you have to run the follwoing three cmdlets first.

Installing Microsoft Azure AD Connect

Wed, 01 Jul 2015 18:34:37 +0000

Last week Microsoft anounced GA for Azure AD Connect. To get a better understanding of how this all works, I installed it in my Cloud based lab that is hosted in Azure.

I was supposed to demonstrate this to a colleague at work this week, but simply couldn’t find time for it, so here’s a short description on how to get started for him and for anyone else.

First I recommend to read through the documentation and also watch the presentation Extending On-Premises Directories to the Cloud Made Easy with Azure Active Directory Connect

How to troubleshoot a Windows-based Azure Virtual Machine

Sun, 05 Apr 2015 22:52:41 +0000

When a physical device running Windows has problems, you have all sorts of possibilities to fix it, when virtual machine hosted within your on-premise virtualization infrastructure runs into issues, you still have all options to fix it. But the first time when a virtual machine hosted in Azure gets into trouble you might feel a little bit lost. But there’s hope. When I ran into an issue myself recently I found the following article “Troubleshoot Remote Desktop connections to a Windows-based Azure Virtual Machine”

PowerShell - How to qukckly access the Azure Management Portal

Mon, 09 Dec 2013 23:42:33 +0000

Whenever I worked with Azure, first thing i usualy did was fire a web search to get the url for the Azure Management portal. I know I could bookmark it……..it’s just that I already have way too many bookmarks. But today I discovered a nice cmdlet in PowerShell called Show-AzurePortal** **which gets you automatically to the right place.

Show-AzurePortal

Note: You must install the Azure PowerShell cmdlets. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/jj156055.aspx

Windows Azure an introduction

Mon, 27 Oct 2008 19:23:31 +0000

Curious about Windows Azure ?

Manuvir-Das-Introducing-Windows-Azure

More information about Windows Azure can be found here

A lap around Windows Azure