Azure Automation – Use AZ Powershell to Schedule AzureSQL Database Scale-Up and Scale-Down Operations

nbeam published 2 years ago in Azure, Cloud Services, Database Administration, Development, Fun, Microsoft, Powershell. Tags: , , , ,

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Continuing on my journey up the Azure Automation mountain, I recently completed a simple AZ PowerShell script that takes several input parameters and scales UP or scales DOWN a given AzureSQL database instance depending on what time of day it is.

Before I go any further, if you are just getting started in Azure Automation, I wrote another article here which may help you avoid some of the headaches I ran into as part of my initial foray:
Azure Automation – Powershell – Getting it Working – Authentication the “Easy” Way -and- Ditching AzureRM

BACKGROUND
Azure has excellent auto-scaling parameters built-in for scaling App Services horizontally (i.e. “out” and “in”… adding or decreasing instance count). However for vertical scaling of AzureSQL services, you are pretty much left to your own devices.

I have an “okay” amount of experience using AZ Powershell to script and get things done in my Azure Subscriptions and with that in mind and the task set in front of me of auto-scaling our AzureSQL databases based on time of day (scale up before the busy hours, scale down when the quiet hours start) I turned to Azure Automation to get the work done.

Being an IT professional of several years, I did what we all do… I turned to Google and searched for scripts I could just steal, modify, and use (I am nodding at you right now…). However, if your want to use “AZ” Powershell instead of the deprecated “AzureRM”… I think the term is… “forgetaboutit.” The templates and examples that I found were either based on Powershell “Workflows” which I didn’t want to mess with and/or used the old AzureRM Powershell syntax. So I then turned to… Powershell ISE… and started writing.
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Azure Automation – Powershell – Getting it Working – Authentication the “Easy” Way -and- Ditching AzureRM

nbeam published 2 years ago in Authentication, Azure, Cloud Services, Development, Fun, Microsoft, Powershell. Tags: , , , , , ,

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I have been using Powershell to manage pieces of Azure on and off for about a year and half now. I had heard tell of Azure Automation but never really had a good reason to justify spending the time climbing that particular mountain (hill really…).

Then the request came through… let’s scale AzureSQL databases up and down based on time of day for a given project… If you have worked in Azure you know Microsoft has built in a fairly robust and relatively easy to use auto scale-out configuration interface for Azure App services. Not so for “up/down” scale operations (increasing/decreasing the size of a single-instance). Hence, my foray into Azure Automation.

I have done a fair bit of Azure Powershell scripting just using the ISE interface and keeping scripts on my desktop. I started out with “AzureRM” and migrated to “AZ” as Microsoft starting a couple of years ago pretty much said “AZ” is the future… switch now.

With that background in place, I will state that I found starting out on Azure Automation to be a bit of a bumpy ride. I wanted to hopefully save you the reader some of the time I spent chasing my tail…
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Can’t See All Azure Subscriptions Using AZ Powershell Module? I Found the Fix…

nbeam published 2 years ago in Azure, Cloud Services, Microsoft, Powershell. Tags: , , , ,

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I recently ran into a frustrating issue where I setup a new subscription in Azure and when I went to manage with Powershell I couldn’t see on the list that gets output from the following command:
Get-AzSubscription
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Powershell System Inventory Script Using Active Directory – Collect RAM, CPU, Storage, etc. from Multiple Remote Systems

nbeam published 2 years ago in Microsoft, Powershell, Windows Administration. Tags: , , ,

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In my line of work we often evaluate new ways to do things, specifically new platforms for server hosting, disaster recovery, backups, etc.

One of the requests that often comes from vendors is “How big is your environment?”

Microsoft has the rather excellent “MAP” tool however I find it to be a bit slow, somewhat complex, and often returns a lot more information than I want… and not always everything I need.

To that end, I wrote the following powershell function and it has been a major help in automating these inventory requests:
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Modern Authentication Issues with Office 365 – FIXED – Don’t Just Disable Azure Active Directory Authentication Library (ADAL) – Instead… Fix It With This!

nbeam published 2 years ago in Authentication, Azure, Cloud Security, Cloud Services, Information Security, Microsoft, Office365, Powershell, Windows 10, Windows Administration. Tags: , , , , ,

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A colleague of mine recently solved one of the biggest pain points I have dealt with regarding Office365 – that is, Microsoft’s seemingly hit-or-miss modern authentication.

Symptoms look like this:
1. Outlook client can’t connect and/or authenticate for end-users
2. Turning on Azure MFA for an end-user ruins their life (and yours) because all office applications, teams, etc. break.
3. Admins have an impending sense of “dread” when setting up systems for new users because 80% of the time they are going to spend hours sorting out the above issues.
4. You call Microsoft Support complaining of these issues and they are eventually stumped and tell you to rebuild the desktop/laptop from scratch… great for end-users that deal with this issue 1 year into the job and rather like their systems as-is… -or- MS Support tells you to pop a registry key into the end-user’s system which just disables Modern Authentication all together – which may fix Outlook but leaves many many other things broken…
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