Where can I find Azure storage cmdlets for PowerShell? - powershell

David Aitken's blog post and another post I cannot find anymore talk about PowerShell cmdlets within a CloudDrive example that let you manipulate Azure storage blobs and queues. Where are these now? He refers (presumably based on Azure SDK 1.0) to a samples.zip file, but my SDK just contains a Windows Azure SDK Samples link. I cannot find CloudDrive there, although it is mentioned in this archive. Unfortunately the associated downloads omit CloudDrive. I feel this must be somewhere really obvious, but I am too stupid to find it.

Check http://www.cerebrata.com/. They have more comprehensive version of Azure Cmdlets. However, it is not free.
http://www.cerebrata.com/Products/AzureManagementCmdlets/Default.aspx

Current version of WASM works with Azure SDK 1.3 and you can download it here.
To install WASM with Azure SDK 1.4 you can use workaround in this blog
If you have access to Remote Desktop to any of the deployed instances to Azure, you can just use cmdlets that are installed there. This is actually much better option if you want to debug your PowerShell script works or confirm how they run in real Azure environment.

You can use Windows Azure PowerShell which is provided by Microsoft. There are many storage PowerShell cmdlet there.
The msdn page is here.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj152841.aspx
Download Link: http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9811175&clcid=0x409

Related

Is there any method for vm update in azure except update management tool in automation account

I need to develop powershell script for automating vm patches updating in azure. I know we can do it by using azure update management but is there any other way to do it? I'm new to it please help.
You could refer to this Virtual Machines - Update to update a virtual machine.
PATCH https://management.azure.com/subscriptions/{subscriptionId}/resourceGroups/{resourceGroupName}/providers/Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachines/{vmName}?api-version=2020-06-01
In addition, we could also do this in the UI and capture the request URL and request Body in the Network via F12, then convert it to power shell script.
As per this Microsoft Q&A platform question, you may use PSWindowsUpdate powershell module cmdlets.
And, if you are looking for a way to implement a way by removing dependency on Azure Automation and Azure Log Analytics then check Automatic VM guest patching (Preview).
Also, I would love to know the reason for trying to manually develop script for automating VM patches when the same is already available to us in the form of Update management solution (that is integrated with Azure Automation and Azure Log Analytics).

AzureDevOps Exporting the ProcessTemplate

We have created a process template on the Enterprise level access on Microsoft AzureDevOps platform. We were looking to export the process template so that it can imported for some other organization. However we do not find an option to do so. Can anyone help?
The only way I've found so far to export inherited processes to other organizations is to use the process-migrator tool that's on GitHub made by Microsoft. There are some wonky things about it that don't totally work but hopefully should be a good start:
https://github.com/Microsoft/process-migrator
You download and install dependencies on the tool then you can run migrate or export/import (I think I usually do export/import).
I think that it works okay as-is except for if you have work item rules that are type CurrentUserIsMemberOfGroup, and picklists don't export correctly, but you'll want to do some testing of the tooling first. I also found out recently that this tooling uses an old SDK/API version (API v4.1) so hopefully it will be updated soon.
I am not sure through Azure DevOps UI but there are methods in Azure DevOps Services REST API
Export Process Template REST API Documentation
Import Process Template REST API Documentation
Parameters are pretty straighforward and well explained in MS Documentation.

Running PowerShell scripts programmatically in Azure Web Sites

I want to run PS scripts in C# exactly along the lines of Sample
This works on a Cloud Service (Web Role), on a standard server (with execution policy disabled), but not in a Azure Web Site.
Anyone know why this is so?
I don't know of any official documentation on the issue but there are multiple answers on the related forums where Microsoft employees talk about the limitations of not being able/allowed to launch external processes in Windows Azure Web Sites. See
PHP - Warning: exec(): Unable to fork
PDF Generator failing on Azure Website but not development machine
Recommended HTML to PDF Generator that works on Azure Website Reserved mode with Full Trust
You are probably trying to do that with your powershell script.
You could verify if that is in fact your issue by catching and looking at the exception(s) which should relate to security policies/permissions.

csmanage or powershell commandlets, which one to choose?

After looking around for some information about managing my azure app i found csmanage and powershell commandlets. What are the difference between these applications and which one to choose?
The basis of Windows Azure Services management is REST API and beauty of using REST API is that you can wrap REST in any programming language as longs as there is networking and security infrastructure available. Most of the tools you mentioned above are using REST API underneath and using Windows Azure Service Management API. CSMANAGE and PowerShell Cmdlets are using Windows Azure Service Management API to manager Windows Azure subscriptions. You can learn more about Service Management API here.
There is also another tool call WAPMMC (Windows Azure Platform Management Tool (MMC) which is also built upon Service Management API.
Besides it there are 3rd party tools which are built using Service management API i.e. Cerebrata Powershell cmdlets.
Comparing all of above, I would say Windows Azure Powershell Cmdlets is the most powerful tool among all of these and it has been updated with bug fixes and many more features added frequently. To use it in your machine you just need to download powershell cmdlets and Windows Azure SDK in your machine as these are required.
http://wappowershell.codeplex.com/
Recently I also found a Java based tool called Burp to use REST API directly from its shell to manage Windows Azure subscription. There is no need for .net framework or Azure SDK. You just need a machine with Java runtime and Burp. I have added a blog on this regard here.
I think it depends on what you're more comfortable with. I don't think the CSManage tool is being updated that much any longer (maybe at all - unsure). The PowerShell cmdlets get a lot of attention - both from Microsoft and partners like Cerebrata.
My vote - learn PowerShell and go with the PowerShell cmdlets for working with your Windows Azure apps. Small learning curve and well worth it.

Is Make-Shell deprecated?

A couple of years ago I used Make-shell to create custom shells with custom cmdlets.
Later I used snap-in technique and I forgot about that option.
Now I should deploy a set of custom cmdlets to a big set of customers, and it would be better to provide a zero-configuration solution; hence, I remembered the custom shell solution and I'm wondering if it is still the best solution in such scenario. It would be helpful also because my cmdlets use WF 4.0, so that the shell should run under latest framework version.
Anyway, I'm a bit scared about support for it: is it still working with Powershell 2.0 functionalities?
Are there alternative ways to easily deploy cmdlets on customers' machines?
Thank you
In PowerShell V2 the alternative are modules.
You can write script modules, binaries modules, manifest modules. Simple to deploy. They are deployed by a simple directory copy. And theoretically may be shared on the Network in a path writen in the environement variable PSModulePath.
According to this StackOverflow entry PowerShell (the engine) runs fine under .NET 4.0.
Make-shell is no longer provided with PowerShell, you can find it if you install the Windows SDK. This article present it as deprecated. But I'am not able to find the information on Microsoft site.
Not sure why you would use makeshell when you can create your own PowerShell "shell" called a host. Have you seen Joel Bennet's PoshConsole which uses .NET 4?
http://poshconsole.codeplex.com/
That said if you really want to use makeshell, I have more recent blog post where I built a new sqlps host with it even
http://sev17.com/2010/05/the-truth-about-sqlps-and-powershell-v2/