Azure Linux Team Blog

Deploying a NixOS VM on Microsoft Azure

saudas — Fri, 22 Jul 2016 21:46:08 GMT

Today we are excited to announce the ability to provision a NixOS VM on Azure. NixOS is a Linux distribution that uses a declarative approach to configure your system. You can read more about NixOS on https://nixos.org/ . We will use the Azure CLI to provision a NixOS VM. You can install the latest Azure CLI here To get started follow the steps outlined in this github repository. The first step is to create a storage account in Azure and upload the NixOS vhd which can be downloaded here. The VHD is about 2GB in size and if you are on a slow network as I was when I was uploading it at home, it could take up to 10 mins for the upload to complete. The URI of the uploaded vhd is of the format https://.blob.core.windows.net//.vhd which on my case is https://bg09p.blob.core.windows.net/vm-images/nixos-unstable-standalone.vhd Once the upload is complete, you can use the $azure vm create command to provision a VM. Once the VM is created, you can view FQDN of the created VM by using the $azure vm show command as shown below. You can the SSH into the machine using the command $ ssh username@FQDN as shown below. Once you are logged in, you can view the status of the agent by typing in $ status waagent as shown below. This is our first step towards enabling NixOS on Azure and we hope that you will find it useful. Given that this is still in beta, please file any issues here

Azure CLI 0.10.2 release update (5th July 2016)

saudas — Wed, 20 Jul 2016 11:50:36 GMT

Greetings! We are excited to announce updates to the Azure CLI in the July release. In the upcoming release of the Azure CLI (0.10.2) we have the following updates:

Scaling out the Azure Container Service (ACS) cluster
Merging the list and list-all VM Scale Sets (VMSS) commands
Listing ip-addresses of virtual machines in resource groups or subscriptions

You can install the latest Azure CLI here

Scaling out the Azure Container Service (ACS) cluster

Since we made Azure Container Service generally available at the end of April, we received considerable feedback for the need of a simple scale command. As of the 0.10.2 release of the CLI, we have added a scale out command that allows you to scale out an ACS cluster. Type the below in the Azure CLI to get started. $ azure acs scale -h The support for scaling allows horizontal scaling out, i.e., is increasing the number of agents/virtual machine’s (VM) in an ACS cluster. The new-agent-count represents a target value for the number of agents/VMs, and the scale command will create agents/VMs to match the new number.

Merging the list and list-all VM Scale Sets (VMSS) commands

We have also merged the list and list-all VMSS commands to be one list command to be on par with the VM commands. The existing list command displayed the list of VMSS in a resource group specified while the list-all command displayed the list of VMSS in a subscription. The new VMSS list command will have the resource group as the optional parameter. The VMSS list command without a resource group input parameter would list all VMSS’s in a subscription while the VMSS list command with a resource group input parameter would list all VMSS’s in the resource group specified.

Listing ip-addresses of virtual machines in resource groups or subscriptions

Finally, a lot of folks asked us how they could view the ip-addresses of all virtual machines under a subscription or a resource group. After all, it is key to be able to quickly find the ip-address of a virtual machine to be able to SSH in and get down to business. Consequently, we added a simple list-ip-address command in the CLI. Please see usage below.

VM Scale set scale command is now available in the 0.10.1 Azure CLI release

saudas — Mon, 06 Jun 2016 09:53:17 GMT

Since we released the Azure VM Scale Set (VMSS) CLI set of commands at the end of Mar’ 2016, we received a lot of feedback for the need of a simple command for scaling in and scaling out a VMSS. We are thrilled to announce that with the 0.10.1 CLI release, we have the scaling command available. Install the latest Azure CLI here and simply type the below to get started $ azure vmss scale -h The support for scaling allows horizontal scaling (out or in), i.e., is increasing or decreasing virtual machine’s (VM) in a VMSS. The new-capacity represents a target value for the number of VMs, and the scale set will create or delete VMs to match the new number. Please note that when you scale in, VM’s with the highest ID’s are deleted first. If you have workloads running on specific VM’s which need to be left alone, consider manually deleting the VM’s by id ($ azure vmssvm delete …) rather than using the scaling command. We hope that you will find this simple scaling command useful. Feedback is always welcome.

Azure CLI Compute release updates (2nd May 2016)

saudas — Wed, 04 May 2016 21:48:49 GMT

I am excited to share with you a few updates to the Azure CLI given feedback and recommendations. We are constantly looking to improve this command-line experience and would love any additional recommendations or in the comments section below. In this release of the Azure CLI (0.10.0) we have the following updates:

Fast Image alias, a single word identifier for popular VM images, in Quick-Create for VM’s and VM Scale Sets (VMSS)
We now default premium storage in the Quick-Create for VM’s and VM Scale Sets (VMSS)
Top level node name change for Azure Container Service (ACS) from $Azure container.. to $Azure acs..
Updated to bring VMSS commands to be in parity with VM commands

Fast Image aliases for popular VM images in Quick-Create for VM’s and VM Scale Sets (VMSS)

When creating a VM on Azure, we want to make it as easy as possible! We have received a lot of feedback about how hard it is to search for a full URN image name. We now support aliases for the latest version of popular images that you could provide in quick-create instead of searching or remembering the URN for an image, which we do understand is not a simple thing to accomplish. The list of aliases is shown in the table below: Simply type the following command to get started. $ azure vm quick-create

For VMSS, simple type: $ azure vmss quick-create

Default premium storage in the Quick-Create for VM’s and VM Scale Sets (VMSS)

For all Virtual Machines and Virtual Machine Scale Sets, we now use Premium Storage as the default storage option for the OS disk. This offers improved performance and faster boot times when creating VMs or Virtual Machine Scale Sets. While premium storage is not available in all regions, in cases where you choose a location where premium storage is not yet available, we will default the storage to standard. An exhaustive list of premium storage region availability can be found here. In the snapshot below, you can see a ‘Standard_DS1’ premium storage account is created when we run the vm quick-create command.

Top level node name change for Azure Container Service (ACS) from $Azure container.. to $Azure acs..

We did a survey for the top level node for Azure Container Service and found that the existing top level node ‘container’ was confusing and long. Customers provided feedback that the container node confused them into thinking that they were creating Docker containers or Windows Container. As a result of the feedback, we have changed the top level command to ‘acs’ which is an abbreviation of Azure Container Service. To see the list of command type $ azure acs –h

Update VMSS commands to be in parity with VM commands

The following commands have been changed to make them uniform with other VM commands. With these improvements, I hope you will give is a try! Tell us what you think and how we can make it even better. Please leave a comment here or file an issue on GitHub. Saurya

Guidance for community vm images not migrating from VM Depot to Azure Marketplace

saudas — Tue, 03 May 2016 15:48:47 GMT

Since we announced the effort to migrate all Bitnami images to Azure Marketplace a few weeks ago we’ve received fantastic input from customers and the community as we renew efforts to provide trusted technology stacks from the open source ecosystem in Azure Marketplace. However, we also recognize some publishers might want to continue working with images available in VM Depot today, regardless of whether they are on boarded into Marketplace. For those cases, we have a 3 step solution as outlined below.

Step 1: Download your image from VM Depot account

1. Login to your VM Depot publisher’s account. 2. Click on ‘My Account’ icon (Upper Right Corner) 3. Click on ‘Publish Status’ tab. This page will display successful or failed publish status of images for all the locations selected at the time of publishing 4. To download the VHD of image from a particular location, click on the name of location. Upon clicking, the VHD starts downloading and is saved on your local machine. Example-To download VHD from ‘East US’ for image ‘Trial Image One’, click on ‘East US’. If Image is deleted from VM Depot then on click of location you will get the following error.

Step 2: Preparing a new storage location on Azure for your VHD’s

Option 1:

Login to the Azure portal using your subscription credentials and create a new storage account by going to +New -> Data+Storage -> Storage Account and entering the required parameters. After you create the storage account, copy the URL and primary key and click TBD to create a new blob container. Then use a tool such as Storage Explorer to upload/copy the VHD.

Option 2:

Follow the steps below with the Azure CLI to create a storage account, set primary key, create a container and upload the blob: $ azure config mode arm $ azure storage account create --resource-group --location --type $ azure storage account keys list $ export KEY={Primary Key from previous step} $ echo $KEY $ azure storage container create -a -k $KEY $ azure storage blob upload -t page -a -k $KEY --container

vhd-name.vhd –> This is the VHD you downloaded from VM Depot to your local machine in step 1 Once you have gone through the above step, you will have the URI to the vhd that you just uploaded in the following format: https:// .blob.core.windows.net/ / Save this VHD URL as it will be the URL you can use in the future to continue deploying the particular image you’ve just copied over from VM Depot.

As a reminder, before copying this image over to your subscription, you should thoroughly review the licensing terms of the original image in VM Depot. As a community repository, the images are not provided by Microsoft and no guarantees are provided, explicit or implicit.

Step 3: Using an Azure Resource Manager (ARM) template to deploy to Azure

Once you have a VHD URL in your own subscription, it’s very easy to provision this image using Azure Resource Manager. In the Azure Quick Start Galley navigate to the “create VM from user image” template, then click on the ‘Deploy to Azure’ button. You will be directed to the Azure Portal where you might need to login if you haven’t already. Once in the portal, you’ll see a screen similar to the below where you will need to fill out parameters such as resource group, location and, of course, agree to the legal terms. Click on the ‘create’ button to create the VM. Once the VM has started, you can SSH into your VM using the public IP address assigned by the template and start working. With this transition, we renew our commitment to a first-class customer experience through the Azure Marketplace for open-source solutions.

Hello world!

Poorna Sekhar Sainu — Sun, 03 Apr 2016 04:05:12 GMT

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