Microsoft Azure: Administration of Virtual Networks / Diagrams

After creating my first vm on Microsoft Azure, i took a closer look at the dashboard - especially at the menu bar of the dashboard:

First point of interest was the menu item "virtual networks", which led me to the following overview:

Hm. A little bit strange, that the virtual networks just show up with a list of the resource groups (you have to create one - otherwise you are not able to launch a virtual machine). But after doing a click on the resource group, a nice overview to my virtual network was provided:

The menu bar in the middle contains the entry "diagram". So let's see, what kind of diagram Azure will present:

The green item represents the network interface card. The other three items stand for the virtual machine, the network security group and public ip address. The next three screenshots show the details you can obtain, by clicking on these icons:

Microsoft Azure: Automation with AZ cli on linux

One thing which is really important for using cloud infrastructures is to automate your tasks like starting virtual machines, creating storage, ...

It is clear, that there is a CLI for Windows, but is there also a CLI on Linux provided by Microsoft?
And really there is one:

https://docs.microsoft.com/de-de/cli/azure/?view=azure-cli-latest

The installation procedure can be found here.

# apt-get install apt-transport-https lsb-release software-properties-common dirmngr -y
Paketlisten werden gelesen... Fertig
Abhängigkeitsbaum wird aufgebaut.       
Statusinformationen werden eingelesen.... Fertig
lsb-release ist schon die neueste Version (9.20170808ubuntu1).
dirmngr ist schon die neueste Version (2.2.4-1ubuntu1.2).
Die folgenden Pakete werden aktualisiert (Upgrade):
  apt-transport-https python3-software-properties software-properties-common software-properties-gtk
4 aktualisiert, 0 neu installiert, 0 zu entfernen und 173 nicht aktualisiert.
Es müssen 87,2 kB an Archiven heruntergeladen werden.
Nach dieser Operation werden 2.048 B Plattenplatz zusätzlich benutzt.
Holen:1 http://de.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-updates/universe amd64 apt-transport-https all 1.6.8 [1.692 B]
Holen:2 http://de.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-updates/main amd64 software-properties-common all 0.96.24.32.7 [9.908 B]
Holen:3 http://de.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-updates/main amd64 software-properties-gtk all 0.96.24.32.7 [53,6 kB]
Holen:4 http://de.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-updates/main amd64 python3-software-properties all 0.96.24.32.7 [22,0 kB]
Es wurden 87,2 kB in 0 s geholt (427 kB/s).             
(Lese Datenbank ... 421429 Dateien und Verzeichnisse sind derzeit installiert.)
Vorbereitung zum Entpacken von .../apt-transport-https_1.6.8_all.deb ...
Entpacken von apt-transport-https (1.6.8) über (1.6.6ubuntu0.1) ...
Vorbereitung zum Entpacken von .../software-properties-common_0.96.24.32.7_all.deb ...
Entpacken von software-properties-common (0.96.24.32.7) über (0.96.24.32.6) ...
Vorbereitung zum Entpacken von .../software-properties-gtk_0.96.24.32.7_all.deb ...
Entpacken von software-properties-gtk (0.96.24.32.7) über (0.96.24.32.6) ...
Vorbereitung zum Entpacken von .../python3-software-properties_0.96.24.32.7_all.deb ...
Entpacken von python3-software-properties (0.96.24.32.7) über (0.96.24.32.6) ...
apt-transport-https (1.6.8) wird eingerichtet ...

# echo "deb [arch=amd64] https://packages.microsoft.com/repos/azure-cli/ $AZ_REPO main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/azure-cli.list

# apt-key --keyring /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/Microsoft.gpg adv \
>      --keyserver packages.microsoft.com \
>      --recv-keys BC528686B50D79E339D3721CEB3E94ADBE1229CF
Executing: /tmp/apt-key-gpghome.D49hIjQpQ5/gpg.1.sh --keyserver packages.microsoft.com --recv-keys BC528686B50D79E339D3721CEB3E94ADBE1229CF
gpg: Schlüssel EB3E94ADBE1229CF: Öffentlicher Schlüssel "Microsoft (Release signing) " importiert
gpg: Anzahl insgesamt bearbeiteter Schlüssel: 1
gpg:               importiert: 1

# apt-get update && apt-get install azure-cli
Die folgenden NEUEN Pakete werden installiert:
  azure-cli
0 aktualisiert, 1 neu installiert, 0 zu entfernen und 173 nicht aktualisiert.
Es müssen 43,9 MB an Archiven heruntergeladen werden.
Nach dieser Operation werden 398 MB Plattenplatz zusätzlich benutzt.
Holen:1 https://packages.microsoft.com/repos/azure-cli bionic/main amd64 azure-cli all 2.0.56-1~bionic [43,9 MB]
Es wurden 43,9 MB in 7 s geholt (5.905 kB/s).                                                                                                                               
Vormals nicht ausgewähltes Paket azure-cli wird gewählt.
(Lese Datenbank ... 421429 Dateien und Verzeichnisse sind derzeit installiert.)
Vorbereitung zum Entpacken von .../azure-cli_2.0.56-1~bionic_all.deb ...
Entpacken von azure-cli (2.0.56-1~bionic) ...
azure-cli (2.0.56-1~bionic) wird eingerichtet ...

After that i tried to login:

schroff@zerberus:~$ az login
Note, we have launched a browser for you to login. For old experience with device code, use "az login --use-device-code"
You have logged in. Now let us find all the subscriptions to which you have access...
[
  {
    "cloudName": "AzureCloud",
    "id": "yyyy-xxxxx",
    "isDefault": true,
    "name": "Free Trial",
    "state": "Enabled",
    "tenantId": "yyyyy-xxxxxx",
    "user": {
      "name": "d.schroff@gmx.de",
      "type": "user"
    }
  }
]

Within the login process i was redirected to my browser:

and after choosing my account the browser showed up with this message:

And then you can issue commands like:

schroff@zerberus:~$ az vm list
[
  {
    "additionalCapabilities": null,
    "availabilitySet": null,
    "diagnosticsProfile": {
      "bootDiagnostics": {
        "enabled": true,

Microsoft Azure / Ubuntu: Installation waagent

If you want to build your own Linux images for Microsoft Azure, you have to use waagent. So i created a virtual machine on my local host with ubuntu server.
The installation of waagent is easy, if you know, that the package is not called waagent on ubunut but walinuxagent:

# apt install walinuxagent
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  walinuxagent
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 24 not upgraded.
Need to get 170 kB of archives.
After this operation, 1,075 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Get:1 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-updates/main amd64 walinuxagent amd64 2.2.32-0ubuntu1~18.04.1 [170 kB]
Fetched 170 kB in 0s (400 kB/s)  
Selecting previously unselected package walinuxagent.
(Reading database ... 66707 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../walinuxagent_2.2.32-0ubuntu1~18.04.1_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking walinuxagent (2.2.32-0ubuntu1~18.04.1) ...
Processing triggers for ureadahead (0.100.0-20) ...
Setting up walinuxagent (2.2.32-0ubuntu1~18.04.1) ...
update-initramfs: deferring update (trigger activated)
Created symlink /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/walinuxagent.service → /lib/systemd/system/walinuxagent.service.
Created symlink /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/ephemeral-disk-warning.service → /lib/systemd/system/ephemeral-disk-warning.service.
Processing triggers for ureadahead (0.100.0-20) ...
Processing triggers for initramfs-tools (0.130ubuntu3.6) ...
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-4.15.0-45-generic

To get more information wether waagent is supported for your preferred distribution just check this github page: https://github.com/Azure/WALinuxAgent

Microsoft Azure: Where to find the logs

When working with Microsoft Azure, you want to be able to review all actions taken inside your cloud. Therefore you have to go to "monitor":

Inside the subwindow just select "activity log" and edit the filters to your needs (i added "successful):

Some of the activities can be further drilled down. For example the creation of a virtual machine lists many subactivities like "created or updated public ip address":