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Work and live with IT

AzureRM.Network 0.9 breaks Azure Automation Runbooks

If you are using Azure Automation and use the AzureRM.Network module in one of the versions from 0.9.0 to min. 0.10.0, you may experience problems running Azure Automation Runbooks. If the runbooks used are more complex overall, this version may result in a high memory load. If more than 400 MB RAM are used, the runbook ends after three attempts in the status “Suspended”. Failure The runbook job was attempted 3 times, but it failed each time.

Find a free IP address in Azure

Whether with automated deployment or when creating a load balancer in Azure. Finding a free IP address is unfortunately not an easy task with the existing cmdlets. Test-AzureRmPrivateIPAddressAvailability A popular way to archive that is to use the cmdlet Test-AzureRmPrivateIPAddressAvailability. It returns the value TRUE or FALSE when specifying the network and an IP address. Some people now loop through every network address in a subnet until a free IP address is confirmed by TRUE.

AzureSimpleREST Module

Although Microsoft does a great job with their AzureRM Modul module, there are always reasons not to use these cmdlets. In most cases because they are slower than direct requests against the Azure REST API. In other cases because certain functionality has not yet been implemented. The module AzureSimpleREST written by me positions itself in this gap The module contains e.g. functions like “Get-AzSRVMProtectionStatus” which uses an officially documented REST Call, but I don’t know any AzureRM cmdlet that provides this function.

PowerShell Modul Development: Pester Tests

Pester tests can be used to ensure a level of quality in PowerShell module development that would otherwise be difficult to achieve manually. There are two important factors to consider. Module and Function Integrity. Function Integrity I will explore this point in more detail in a later blog entry. In short, the actual function of the module must be ensured. A popular example is a function that adds up two numbers.

Azure Availability Sets vNet dependency

To guarantee high availability of a service on Azure, Availability Sets are a very popular way. But what are the requirements of this configuration for the underlying virtual network? In most design documents you will find an image that looks similar to the following. Two virtual machines in an Availability Set on the same subnet of a virtual network. But what if I want to install the two virtual machines in different subnets or even different virtual networks?

Proxy, Proxy on the Wall...

…who annoys the most in the land. Proxy servers are still a popular tool in many enterprise environments to channel outbound web traffic, scan and prevent threats. Unfortunately, very few companies use transparent proxy solutions and force you to configure the proxy server in the respective application. Since the configuration of the proxy is different for each application, I collect some examples here. Windows You can do a lot of things right with a system-wide proxy.