Microsoft Azure Guide & others

Need to apply my tags to my azure VMs and they are a lot !

Karim M. Moussa — Wed, 20 Jun 2018 01:40:41 GMT

Hi All, I've just finished one script for one of my customers that will help them to apply their Azure tag automatically, you can download the script and either use it in powershell or use Azure automation to automate the process. All that you need to do is to assign tag name and tag value as parameters in the script. Enjoy :)

Getting SQLSTATE[28000] [1045] Access denied for user ‘user’@'IPaddress' (using password: YES) when trying to restore mySQL dump to Azure MySQL DB PaaS

Karim M. Moussa — Wed, 18 Apr 2018 13:30:19 GMT

I was debugging a Magento deployment on Microsoft Azure for one of my customers as they were trying to restore MySQL dump to Azure MySQL DB PaaS and they kept on getting the following error: Getting SQLSTATE[28000] [1045] Access denied for user ‘user’@'IPaddress' (using password: YES) I was able to restore DB dump normally from my machine to the same DB with the same user and password so I suspected that there is something wrong with the DB dump itself and that is when I asked them to share the dump and I found that the dump had the attribute "DEFINER" which requires super privilege which is not allowed on Azure mySQL PaaS and the other issue was that Azure MySQL PaaS is built on INNODB engine and you need to make sure that the script is using this engine. Actions to solve the issues: use the following command to remove the attribute “DEFINER” as it requires super privilege

sed's/\sDEFINER=`[^`]*`@`[^`]*`//g' -ibackupfile_name.sql

I use the following command to replace MyISAM engine with INNODB engine which is the core of the mySQL implementation.

:%s/MyISAM/InnoDB/gc

Azure Media Functions (Server-less Functions)

Karim M. Moussa — Tue, 23 Jan 2018 23:59:25 GMT

I've been working on a set of Azure Serverless functions for Azure Media Services to complement the original series developed in this Git Rep. I focused on building a set of functions that can migrate assets from AWS S3 to Azure Media Services if integrated with the Azure logic workflow built under the same Git Rep mentioned above. The other set is focusing on migration from Limelight The last set is focused on improving the way you can extract Azure Media Services Telemetry via Migrating them from Azure Storage Table to a single Azure SQL DB Table. You can find the source code in my gitHub repo. Let me know if you have more ideas to build up in the functions.

Enable the addition of multiple Nics to Azure VM from the GUI

Karim M. Moussa — Mon, 10 Apr 2017 23:17:48 GMT

Microsoft has launched the ability to have multiple NICs per Azure VM sometime ago but in order for you to have that ability enabled on your Subscription, you need to run the below code on your subscription via PowerShell. First of all you need to login of course using Login-AzureRmAccount and then select your subscription if you have multiple and then run the first two commands and the third to check whether the features are registered or not, it will show registering until it's done and then the status will change to Registered.

Register-AzureRmProviderFeature -FeatureName AllowMultipleIpConfigurationsPerNic -ProviderNamespace Microsoft.Network

Register-AzureRmProviderFeature -FeatureName AllowLoadBalancingonSecondaryIpconfigs -ProviderNamespace Microsoft.Network

Register-AzureRmResourceProvider -ProviderNamespace Microsoft.Network

How to install and configure GUI and OMS on Azure RHEL Linux VM.

Karim M. Moussa — Sun, 19 Feb 2017 02:31:17 GMT

I decided to write this blog post because I struggled to find one myself on the internet on how to install GUI on RHEL VM on Azure, the process seems pretty much easy on premises or on virtualization solutions like Hyper-v or VMware but on Azure it generated a lot of errors due to some conflicts with other components that has been installed on Azure VMs but I was able to do it finally and here you go the steps: First of all it's recommended to use ssh to authenticate VMs on any cloud solution, so let's start with how to generate ssh. how to generate ssh? You can use puttygenerator where after you download and install it , find putty generator application on your machine and open it to generate the ssh, you will need to move your mouse in random moves over s mall rectangular area just to generate a random ssh key, after that you will need to save the private and the public keys to use them later. you will need to open the public key in notepad, copy it and paste inside the text box in the VM creation console in Azure that is asking for it and you are good to go or you can do it from the bash, up to you.

mkdir ~/.ssh
chmod 700 ~/.ssh
ssh-keygen -t rsa

Now after creating the RHEL virtual machine, we need to connect to it. ssh -i [filelocation of private key] user@server how to install desktop?


sudo yum makecache

sudo yum update

sudo yum upgrade

sudo yum -y groupinstall “Desktop Platform” “X Window System” “Fonts”

sudo yum -y groupinstall “General Purpose Desktop"

sudo yum -y install xterm twm xsetroot

sudo yum install xorg-x11-fonts-base xorg-x11-fonts-misc xorg-x11-font-utils xorg-x11-fonts-Type1

sudo yum install tigervnc-server -y

sudo rpm -Uvh https://li.nux.ro/download/nux/dextop/el6/x86_64/nux-dextop-release-0-1.el6.nux.noarch.rpm

sudo rpm -Uvh https://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/6/x86_64/epel-release-6-8.noarch.rpm

sudo yum install xrdp -y

We need to change the password for your user, in my case I'm logging in with root, In Azure the root user doesn't have a password at the time of provisioning of the VM.


sudo passwd root

it will prompt you to change the password.


sudo service xrdp start
sudo iptables -I INPUT -p tcp -m tcp --dport 3389 -j ACCEPT
sudo service iptables save

You need to allow RDP in Azure management portal for this machine by configuring the NSG to enable Inbound RDP for port 3389. after you do this, you can connect to the machine using RDP client from your machine. this will prompt you to enter the username and password on xrdp window and then will connect you will be connected successfully. create OMS workspace https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/log-analytics/log-analytics-get-started for log analytics To enable log analytics on your linux virtual machines, you need to install dependency agent for linux VM wget url of the agent that you can get from the OMS work space itself. To enable Service Map on your new linux VM: wget https://aka.ms/dependencyagentlinux sh location of the dependencyagentlinux.

How to make azure file shares persistent and How can you map it to local sub folders?

Karim M. Moussa — Tue, 24 May 2016 09:28:57 GMT

Hi everyone, most of you already found this base article on how to make Azure file shares persistent into your Azure VM so when the VM reboots, the file share still exists and you don't have to reenter the password again. well, I tried the same article but every time i try to reboot, the azure file connection disappear and wouldn't connect again, after a little bit of research i found out that we need to add the following option to it "/persistent:yes" so instead of this:

net use [drive letter] \\[StorageAccountName].file.core.windows.net\test /u:[StorageAccountName] [storage account access key]

you use this

net use [drive letter] \\[StorageAccountName].file.core.windows.net\test /persistent:yes /u:[StorageAccountName] [storage account access key]

and of course you need to continue the same steps in the article. to be able to map this Azure file share to sub local folder, you need to use mklink

mklink /d "c:\newazurefileshare" "[drive letter]"

while the [drive letter] is the one that you used in the previous commands to map the location to your VM. hope this helps, let me know if you have any issues.

How to delete Azure Resource Groups that doesn't have any resources in them?

Karim M. Moussa — Mon, 18 Jan 2016 11:40:00 GMT

It's been a long time since I wrote posts here, I apologize for this - work load :).

I've just worked on a script that has been originally written by thuru on how to delete Azure Resource group using a power-shell script, I already submitted the changes in GitHub pending approval from thuru the original author but until then, here the code.

This code is supporting Azure Power Shell SDK 1.1.0

<# script will run on the current selected subscription of the session #>
 
 Login-AzureRMaccount
 $currentSub = Get-AzureSubscription -Current
 Write-Host Script will run on $currentSub.SubscriptionName ($currentSub.SubscriptionId)
 $isOk = Read-Host 'Do you want to continue [Y/N] ?'
 
 if ($isOk.ToUpper().Equals("Y"))
 {
 
 
 $resourceGroups = Get-AzureRmResourceGroup
 $fullAuto = Read-Host 'Do you want to delete all the resource groups which do not have any resources. If you select No you can choose one by one and delete them [Y/N] ?'
 
 $found = 0;
 $deleted = 0;
 
 foreach($resourceGroup in $resourceGroups)
 {
 $rgName = $resourceGroup.ResourceGroupName
 
 $resources = Find-AzureRmResource -ResourceGroupName $rgName
 
 if ($resources.Count -eq 0)
 {
 $found++
 Write-Host Resource Group " $rgName " does not contain any resources.
 if($fullAuto.ToUpper().Equals("N"))
 {
 $input = Read-Host 'Do you want to delete it [Y/N] ?'
 if ($input.ToUpper().Equals("Y"))
 {
 Write-Host Deleting Resource Group - $rgName
 Remove-AzureRmResourceGroup -Name $resourceGroup.ResourceGroupName -Force -Verbose
 Write-Host Deleted Resource Group - $rgName
 $deleted++
 }
 }
 else {
 Write-Host Deleting Resource Group - $rgName
 Remove-AzureRmResourceGroup -Name $resourceGroup.ResourceGroupName -Force -Verbose
 Write-Host Deleted Resource Group - $rgName
 $deleted++
 }
 
 }
 }
 Write-Host $deleted / $found Resource Groups deleted with no resources
 
 } else { exit }

How to enable Desktop Experience and enable RDP for a CentOs 7 VM on Microsoft Azure

Karim M. Moussa — Mon, 05 Jan 2015 11:25:00 GMT

[bing_translator]Normally when you provision a Linux VM on Microsoft Azure, it's provisioned for you on the CLI mode which most of the Linux fans are fund of it but in case you would like to use the desktop experience and RDP to the machine instead of SSH to it, you will need to follow these simple steps. Connect to the VM using the SSH command tool like Putty.exe In the upper putty window you can see that I'm connecting to this "VM centosrdp.cloudapp.net" on port 22 which is the default port of ssh, you will need to replace the value of the Host Name and Port with your own, to get this on Microsoft Azure , you will need to navigate to your machine's dashboard on the management portal on Azure, check the screenshot below and obtain the DNS name highlighted below. After Connecting to the VM on the CLI, you will get prompted to enter your username and password, so go ahead and enter the same username and password you created to access your VM on Azure. and then run this command to gain root privileges.

# sudo -s

Install EPEL and nux Desktop repository rpms.

# rpm -Uvh https://li.nux.ro/download/nux/dextop/el7/x86_64/nux-dextop-release-0-1.el7.nux.noarch.rpm

after this is successful, continue by installing the GNOME desktop to get the graphical user interface you desire

# yum groupinstall "GNOME Desktop" "Graphical Administration Tools"

the installation process will take sometime depending on your internet speed, after the installation is done, run the following command to change the reboot from CLI to GUI.

# ln -sf /lib/systemd/system/runlevel5.target /etc/systemd/system/default.target

the next step is to install the xrdp to be able to RDP on the VM

# yum -y install xrdp tigervnc-server

then start the xrdp service

# systemctl start xrdp.service

then test the xrdp service by running the following command, you should see the next screenshot

# netstat -antup | grep xrdp

now you can enable the xrdp service

# systemctl enable xrdp.service

And then add a port in the machine firewall if it was activated, if not then there is no need for the next two commands.

# firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=public --add-port=3389/tcp
# firewall-cmd --reload

Now that we have configured the CentOs 7 VM to have GUI and we have enabled the xrdp service on it, we have only one step left which is only adding an endpoint to the machine on Azure management portal. Go back to the Azure management portal and go to your VM ENDPOINTS Tab, check the screenshot below and then Add a new endpoint by clicking the Addbutton in the task bar on the lower end of the portal.

After clicking on the Add button, you will have the following form where you select from it RDP and choose keep the default values of the port and then click Ok , this will create a RDP endpoint where you can connect successfully to the machine, after the creation is done, you will see a new record added under your ENDPOINTS This is the view after the creation of the endpoint is succeeded

Now you can test the connection to your VM by clicking on connect button in the VM's dashboard task bar

which will download the RDP file to connect to this VM, click connect on it and then you will see this notification which you will have to click Ok

then the RDP window will open with the following screenshot

Enter your credentials here and then you will see the following prompt windows and viola you did it :)

IN CASE OF A PROXY WHILE UPLOADING YOUR VHD TO WINDOWS AZURE USING POWERSHELL

Karim M. Moussa — Sat, 13 Dec 2014 08:43:22 GMT

Sometimes when you are trying to do certain process on Windows Azure via Powershell you receive an ambiguous error with no specific error message, make sure that you don’t have a proxy in the environment blocking your communication to Windows Azure, If you do have one, then run the below command and then retry what you were doing before, it should work.

this is basically a .net code that is taking your credentials and passing it on to the proxy while executing your commands.

[System.Net.WebRequest]::DefaultWebProxy.Credentials = [System.Net.CredentialCache]::DefaultCredentials

Microsoft Azure White Papers in One Place :)

Karim M. Moussa — Sat, 13 Dec 2014 08:41:29 GMT

https://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/net/other-resources/white-papers/