How to roll out latest .net framework on Azure VM? - azure

I created a Azure VM (windows sever 2016) using azure portal. It has .net 4.6.2 installed on it. Now I want to roll out latest available .net framework (4.7/ 4.7.1) on it. One option is to download required framework and install it on the VM. I am sure there should be some other better way to roll out .net framework on Azure VMs using Azure portal or ARM template. Please help me with the option available for the same.

Like the other answer says, you could use Azure Powershell DSC extensión, but there other ways to achieve that.
Usually you dont want the latest versión of the specific app\framework. You want the versión you've tested your app\code against (so its pretty static). You could créate a VM, install all the stuff you need and capture it. You will get an image and from that image you can deploy copies of the VM. That process can be automated with packer (so you dont have to build\recapture manually when\if you want to update something).
Another options is using Azure VM Script Extensión, which is a lot easier than diving into Powershell DSC.
Also, sometimes you could find an image in the gallery that corresponds to your needs (but I doubt that it is the case this time).

There is not currently a way in the Azure portal to deploy/upgrade .NET Framework in a VM. If this was something you were going to be doing a bunch I think you should use PowerShell Desired State Configuration (to install/update .NET Framework) in an Azure Resource Manager (ARM Template). This is a good walk through for what that process would look like.

If you use Run Command from the Azure Portal to run Start-Process you can get it to run a script from storage to install .net framework.

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IaC Azure Automation

I would like to perform the following steps on schedule (presumably using Azure Automation):
Provision a VM in Azure
Run a powershell script on that VM
Deprovision VM
Actually I have more steps but left only 3 for simplicity.
I am new to IaC and appreciate your general guidance and advice.
Is it scope of Azure Automation or I need something else?
I would like to code everything in text format and put in Git and update automatically via Pull Requests
Should I use Runbooks or DSC?
Regarding step 2, I cannot figure out how I can upload my powersehll script into newly created VM and run it locally. The script downloads some files and updates some remote resources.
Thanks,
Ruslan
there are a lot of options and tools to achieve your goal.
If you will be working strictly in the Azure cloud, The following tools are most commonly used for building an environment.
Azure-powershell
Azure-CLI
ARM-templates
each of them very similar but all a little different with their own benefits to them, but they are all tools for building your virtual infrastructure. For configuring your resources there are other tools. Like you mentioned yourself, DSC is a tool to configure virtual machines.
if you are planning to use github to push your code, i would recommend using ARM-templates. You can very easily use your own or other templates by referencing in your code. However this might be the 'hardest' solution to learn and understand the syntax in comparison to the cli and powershell. But also the most frequently used.
It is possible to build your environment and configure it in the same script using the Azure-CLI, Azure-Powershell or an other opensource solution like Terraform, But this is not best practice.
A lot of starter scripts are publicly available on github and in the Microsoft docs.
if you have any specific questions you can always send me a message, i am currently working on azure automation myself.

Azure VMSS Deploy wpf

I am trying to better understand azure virtual machine scale sets and how my company can use it. Currently we run a custom software (wpf program) that will need to be deployed and updated on all VMs.
Is a extension where I setup the deploy of the wpf?
Can I pull the files from a git repo to deploy?
How do I config this?
Not directly. there is a custom script extension and azure powershell dsc extension (and several others, like chef) which allow you to do pretty much anything, but nothing built-in
No, you cannot do that natively, you can use those extensions to do whatever you like. Or, better, you can use ci\cd systems (like Azure Devops) to do that. You need to install agent on the vm (in most cases) and then use that ci\cd system to deploy to vmss instances.
Another alternative - using images, that is a native way, but you need to prebuild images (packer, questionmark).

Deploying Applications other than WebApp using Azure Resource Manager

I am currently looking into using ARM to deploy new environments of our Azure Components. We have a lot of web apis that are deployed to Cloud Services, since we need access to the underlying OS to get CPU usage for App Dynamics metrics. When reading through ARM, it seems as if they are deprecating Cloud Services, but I have some confusion about what is replacing it. I see that you can create Web Apps using this and use Publish from Visual Studio to deploy the app it, but I see no options for Cloud Services. So what is the preferred method to do this? Creating a VM and deploying using Web Deploy? What about VM scaling. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
My company is in the process of moving a legacy app to Azure using Cloud Services and we were concerned about the future of Cloud Services. Since we are somewhat early into the project and would like to use the ARM model we thought it would be easier to make a move now if we knew the future. After a few conversations with project leads at Microsoft on this topic we were only told that we should continue working with Cloud Services as they would continue to be supported.
It's quite clear that the move to ARM was not well thought out in terms of direction and consequences of existing services that many people are already using. Reading between the lines I would say that there is no plan to convert Cloud Services from the ASM to ARM model.
If application insights (https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/application-insights/) are sufficient for your monitoring needs, then you can use web apps. These can be deployed via ARM, and can automatically deploy from a git repo or web deploy package. See this example:
https://github.com/Azure/azure-quickstart-templates/tree/master/201-web-app-github-deploy
The issue here that you may be trying to do operations which are restricted by the web app sandbox.
Failing that, you can use an ARM template to set up a VM and then invoke a custom site extension which will run powershell code to do further provisioning. This powershell code can fetch any package that you may want to install. See this ARM template for example: https://github.com/Azure/azure-quickstart-templates/tree/9ad72f1f5f0008c14311be79eee036b871712394/201-list-storage-keys-windows-vm
Once the VM is created you would be able to modify it and scale as needed.

Create Azure cloud service config from existing setup

I have two Azure VM's running in a cloud service. They contains almost the same thing. Some TCP port's are also opened between them.
Is it possible to create a deploy package from this existing setup so that at a later time can deploy this setup in an easy way. I.e. I want to be able to do this:
1. Create deploy package from existing setup *
2. Delete whole existing cloud service including VM's
3. Deploy the package from step 1 and have everything created again.
*I can save one of the VM's to my Azure storage and use it as template for both of them if that is easier.
How to accomplish this if it is possible?
Yes, you can take what you have as a template and use it to stand up multiple silos. But in IaaS, there isn't a notion of a deployment package. There's a few things you'll need to do...
1) understand how to take an existing VM and turn it into an image
2) use Powershell or another DevOps style automation suite (Chef/Puppet/etc..) to define deploy your silo.
You seem specifically interested in how to create an image so I'd recommend using the tutorial we have published on this. http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/documentation/articles/virtual-machines-capture-image-windows-server/ This does of course presume you're running Windows Server. But a Linux version it can be found at: http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/documentation/articles/virtual-machines-linux-capture-image/
The automation of a deployment depends on a great many things, so I'd suggest at a starting point, familiarizing yourself with the management API: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/ee460799.aspx
With the implementation of Resource Manager, you can now easily use JSON template to deploy and redeploy resources in Azure. There are also starter templates available - https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/templates/

Hosting existing node.js apps on Windows Azure

Is it possible to port existing node.js applications to Windows Azure platform? I currently develop on my Mac but will need to deploy the application to Windows Azure in a near future.
You may also want to check a video on Channle 9.
node.js on Azure : http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Patterns-Practices-Symposium-Online/Patterns-Practices-Symposium-Online-2012/node-js-on-Azure
Yes it is very much possible. You may also need to consider to make changes to use Azure Blob storage where your node.js code is using local file system (if required). The deployment is very similar to any other Windows Azure App and one you have Azure SDK for node.js you can use powershell cmdlets to make your job easy.
Download Node.js SDK for Azure
https://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/nodejs/
Here you can learn the basics to deploy node.js app to Azure:
https://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/nodejs/tutorials/getting-started/
Porting node.js apps to Azure is possible but not yet a yes/no answer.
You can run your Node apps in Azure but you need to look at the modules you're using to make sure you aren't depending on a tool or command or other facility that isn't yet available on Azure. For example, are you using a database like redis or couchDB or mysql? These don't exist natively in Azure so you may or may not be able to port that layer -- you'll have to check.
Since you're on a Mac, there isn't yet a native OS X deployment tool. Microsoft and the Cloud9 folks have been showing a way for Macs to deploy from the Cloud9 IDE which works but the Mac story will most assuredly improve over time. I work on a Mac but I keep a Windows VM open (Parallels) and if I deploy from the desktop I've been using the Powershell cmdlets in the Windows Azure SDK for Node.js which makes things fairly turnkey from Windows.
You will want to follow a couple of repos and their contributors: Azure SDK for Node, which allows native access to Azure Storage via npm install azure and iisnode (on Github) which is a component that assists your node app running under IIS (the Windows Web Server) on Azure.
It's been great to see the Node story on Azure evolve; it's still just a little early but they seem to be making great progress quickly.

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