Azure Stack

Speaking at OSCON and MMS May 2017

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May is a busy month for me with the opportunity to speak at both OSCON – Open Source Convention (https://conferences.oreilly.com/oscon/oscon-tx) and MMS – Midwest Management Summit (https://mmsmoa.com)! OSCON is May 8th through the 11th in Austin Texas. MMS is May 15th through the 18th in Minnesota.

At OSCON I will be presenting on “How to Motivate Technical Employees” with friend and fellow Microsoft MVP Samuel Erskine – @samerskine. This will be on Thursday, May 11, 2017 at 4:15pm–4:55pm. This session is for CIOs, CTOs, IT directors, and IT managers and will cover how to retain your top talent and give you five ways to motivate technical employees. Come to this session to learn the secret sauce for keeping employee’s engaged!  Here is a link to the session: https://conferences.oreilly.com/oscon/oscon-tx/public/schedule/detail/57374

At MMS I will be presenting three sessions! These sessions are:

“Awesomize your Azure Stack Deployments with Azure Stack Tools” with fellow MVP Mikael Nystrom -@mikael_nystrom.

Link: https://mms2017.sched.com/event/AUae/awesomize-your-azure-stack-deployments-with-azure-stack-tools

“Azure Operationalized” with fellow MVP Natascia Heil – @NatasciaHeil.

Link: https://mms2017.sched.com/event/AUbn/azure-operationalized

“Backup is Dead! Restore is Born in the Cloud!” with fellow MVP Robert Hedblom -@RobertandDPM.

Link: https://mms2017.sched.com/event/AUaR/backup-is-dead-restore-is-born-in-the-cloud

These conferences will be lots of great community fun! Hope to see you there.

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Sys Admin to Cloud Admin…ITSM to CloudOps…On-Prem to Azure Stack/Azure

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A while back I posted a blog titled “Surviving the future of IT as an IT pro”. In that blog post I set out to share my opinion on where IT is headed and what you should focus on as an IT pro going forward. I guess this post could be considered part 2 however in this post I will focus more on where things are heading as a whole.

So what is this blog really about? It is about “the Transition from ITOPS & ITSM to CloudOps via Azure Stack (Hybrid Cloud) powering DevOps and becoming core to the Digital Transformation of business” that is happening. Whew…..Ok, a lot was said in that previous sentence. J Let’s break it down.

Transition from ITOPS & ITSM to CloudOps

There has been this transition in IT for a while to increase the density in data centers. This was started with the wide adoption of the hypervisor (VMWare, Hyper-V, Citrix Xen etc…). The goal is to get more out of existing and less physical hardware. Think about 1 physical server hosting hundreds of virtual servers. Things have since accelerated at a fast pace. We now have containers, PaaS, and serverless. With these newer technologies, the density is even greater.

The real power behind cloud is software defined everything. With software, defined environments AKA cloud a new skillet and a different way of thinking about managing operations is needed. This new skillset and new way of thinking for the operationalization of cloud is known as CloudOps. IT Operations and IT Service Management do not go away with CloudOps. The evolution of ITOPS and ITSM become CloudOps. The best parts of ITOPS and ITSM (ITIL) funnel into CloudOps used for operating clouds.

Hybrid Cloud (Azure Stack)

Hybrid Cloud is going to be a huge part of cloud initiatives in many organizations for years to come. You can see this on the Gartner reports(http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/3354117), Right Scale reports (http://www.rightscale.com/blog/cloud-industry-insights/cloud-computing-trends-2017-state-cloud-survey) and based on the investments the major cloud players are making to build the best Hybrid Cloud solutions.

Hybrid Cloud Is the Preferred Enterprise Strategy, but Private Cloud Adoption Fell

From Rightscale “Cloud Computing Trends: 2017 State of the Cloud Survey” Report:

http://www.rightscale.com/blog/cloud-industry-insights/cloud-computing-trends-2017-state-cloud-survey#hybrid-cloud

Recently IBM and Red Hat announced their launch into the Hybrid Cloud space.

(http://www.networkworld.com/article/3182989/cloud-computing/ibm-red-hat-an-open-source-hybrid-cloud.html)

A while back Amazon and VMWare announced their launch into the Hybrid Cloud space.

(http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161013006574/en/VMware-AWS-Announce-Hybrid-Cloud-Service-%E2%80%9CVMware>)

Microsoft was the first to jump into the Hybrid Cloud space and is the only company that has a 100% true Hybrid Cloud solution. Both VMWare/Amazon and IBM/Red Hat have solutions that run private cloud on public cloud. The private cloud solutions are being retrofitted to run in public cloud as the framework for their Hybrid Cloud solutions. These are not consistent cloud platforms running the same exact bits on bare metal on-premises and in the cloud like Microsoft’s Azure Stack solution. Azure Stack is the same bits in the public cloud and on-premises down to the bare metal.

IBM and Amazon jumping into the Hybrid Cloud space is more proof this will be a large area of growth in IT for years to come. I wonder if Google will decide to jump into the Hybrid Cloud space at some point and what their strategy will be.

DevOps powered by Azure Stack and CloudOps

Azure Stack serves as a catalyst to help move DevOps initiatives forward within organizations. With Azure Stack’s comes the native ability to run the environment using Infrastructure as code, continuous integration, continuous delivery, microservices, integration with source control systems, and more. All of the aforementioned are a part of DevOps.

Along with Azure Stack is the need to run the environment using a CloudOps model. Here is a list of concepts that drive CloudOps:

  • Extreme Hardware Standardization
  • Software Defined Everything
  • Extreme Automation
  • Focus on Zero Downtime
  • Self Service
  • Measured Service
  • Multitenancy

CloudOps is overall focused on business applications critical for running the business through the continuous operations of clouds. CloudOps leaves business unit projects to DevOps. CloudOps instead focuses on the delivery of the the cloud infrastructure to support self-service leveraged by DevOps teams.

David Armour of Microsoft often shares great information on CloudOps and what it means. You can follow him on twitter here: https://twitter.com/Darmour_MSFT

CloudOps supports DevOps and DevOps is core to Digital Transformation

Digital Transformation is the accelerating transformation of the way businesses do business from traditional ways often brick and mortar to the digital front through the use of digital technologies. Businesses are shifting to meet their customers and employees where they are today on digital platforms. In the business world, today it is well known that you must innovate and grow through the use of technology or become obsolete and left in the wake of disruptive companies that are leveraging technology to meet their customers on the digital front.

Examples of digitally transformed company’s vs non-digitally transformed companies are:

  • Netflix vs Blockbuster
  • Amazon vs Target, Best Buy, Macy’s
  • Airbnb vs Wyndom hotels
  • Uber vs Taxi Companies

Digital Transformation is critical to business and IT departments need to be a core driver to help organizations move forward on the digital transformation front. Digital Transformation is the new Industrial Revolution of business today with CloudOps/DevOps being the Assembly line that will bring innovation to the business.

Through DevOps businesses can bring digital services to the market at very fast rates and can pivot quickly as needed to beat and stay ahead of the competition meeting the customers’ demands in an agile way. CloudOps allows the scale and another point to pivot on at any time to redirect in a new direction as needed by the business in an agile manor.

Through a Hybrid Cloud solution like Azure Stack things IoT, Microservices, extreme automation, hyper-scale, and agility can be realized for the business empowering Digital Transformation from the core.

The transition of the IT Pro to Cloud Pro

Ok. That was a lot of information and background on CloudOps, DevOps, Digital Transformation and Hybrid Cloud. You may be asking yourself at this point where does the IT Pro fit into the picture? Let me answer that for you and take you on a tour of Azure Stack to prove why as an IT Pro you should start working with it today!

The path for an IT Professional when moving from traditional IT into a Hybrid Cloud world consists of:

  A cloud administrator can configure and manage resource providers, tenant offers, plans, services, quotas, and pricing.
A tenant purchases (or acquires) services that the service administrator offers. Tenants can provision, monitor, and manage services that they have subscribed to, such as Web Apps, Storage, and Virtual Machines.

Those cloud roles fit in a new world of CloudOps including Cloud architect, engineer, and administrator. Being a part of CloudOps requires a different mindset. Think about dynamic shifts such as software defined everything and extreme standardization. More concepts and technologies that a cloud role requires an understanding of are:

  • IaaS
  • PaaS
  • Software Defined Data Center technologies
  • Automation
  • Source Control Systems
  • Business Intelligence (Showback/Chargeback)
  • High Availability technologies
  • Backup and Disaster Recovery
  • Scaling technologies
  • Containerization
  • Server less technologies
  • Cloud Security
  • Both Linux and Windows
  • Self-Service (Service Catalog)
  • Multitenancy technologies
  • Tenant administration
  • And more

Ok. Now let’s jump into some example of CloudOps tooling in Azure Stack. First off, we as a cloud admin you need to know how to perform management of tenants (customers). Here is an example of a dashboard for doing this in Azure Stack:

In Azure Stack, you will need to know and understand the administration of managing the cloud itself. This includes many things some of them being management of a region/s, resource providers that contain the services you can offer up to tenants, along with monitoring, high availability, and backup of the cloud. Below is an example of administration in Azure Stack at the cloud model layer of CloudOps.

We already mentioned monitoring. There is monitoring of the cloud environment itself but there also is a need to monitor the resources being consumed by the tenants. One of the great things about Azure and Azure Stack is the out of the box monitoring and health diagnostics of IaaS virtual machines. I am a SCOM guy and have done a lot of SCOM projects. SCOM works well and serves a purpose but the out of the box monitoring in Azure and Azure Stack is amazing in the ease of turning it on. Once turned on it just works and has very nice visuals to see and work with as shown in the following screenshot. As a cloud administrator, you need technology to be easy so that you can move away from complex setups and troubleshooting the monitoring solution and move to monitoring the resources.

One of the best benefits about Hybrid Cloud is the consistency between public and on-premises cloud. In the following screenshot news updates on Azure and Azure stack are the same. 🙂 Another huge point of consistency between Azure and Azure Stack is the ability to view, deploy and run items from the Azure marketplace in Azure Stack. This is called marketplace syndication.

 

Azure

  

Azure Stack

Azure Stack is set to release in 2017. I want to highlight some of the services already in Azure Stack and more coming to Azure Stack that can be offered in your Service Catalog to tenants.

Already in Azure Stack as of TP3:

  • SQL PaaS
  • MySQL PaaS
  • Web Apps PaaS
  • Computer IaaS
  • Virtual Machines (Linux or Windows)
  • VM Scale Sets
  • Storage
  • Networking
  • PaaS: Storage
  • Key Vault
  • Management of Azure Pack virtual machines
  • Marketplace Syndication

Coming to Azure Stack at some point:

  • Microservices
  • Service Fabric
  • Cloud Foundry
  • Blockchain
  • Container Service
  • IoT

Another big part of CloudOps is being able to measured services that are being consumed. Measured Service can translate to show back or charge back. Measured Service is the ability to track the usage of resources down to the individual resource level. With Azure and Azure Stack resource management (ARM) model resources are carved out and placed into resource groups. In ARM, each resource has an associated cost that is tracked via the usage. There is full role based access around resources and resource groups. Resources and resource groups can be tagged and each resource or resource group’s usage can be tracked and displayed on business intelligence reporting or a dashboard like shown in the following screenshot.

That concludes this blog post. I hope I was able to shed some light on the transition from IT Pro to cloud pro, from IT Ops/ITSM to CloudOps and showcase the power of Hybrid Cloud via Azure Stack. Stay tuned for more exciting stuff coming from Azure Stack.

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Monitor Azure Stack Fabric with OMS

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I wanted to monitor my Azure Stack environment with OMS. This would include only the Azure Stack fabric servers and the host. I did not want to manually install the OMS agent on all of these servers especially since the Azure Stack fabric is a set of known servers. So I decided to put together a quick PowerShell script to handle the install of the OMS agents including the workspace ID and key. Here are details for the script:

<#

.SYNOPSIS
This script can be used to install OMS agents on all of the Azure Stack Fabric servers. This has been tested with TP2.

.DESCRIPTION
This script can be used to install OMS agents on all of the Azure Stack Fabric servers. This has been tested with TP2. This script can be run from PowerShell ISE or a PowerShell console. It is recommended to run this from an elevated window. This script should be run from the Azure Stack host. Ensure you are logged onto the Azure Stack host as azurestack\azurestackadmin. This script allows you to input your OMS workspace ID and key. The Azure Stack Fabric servers that this script will attempt to install on is:

“MAS-Con01”,

“MAS-WAS01”,

“MAS-Xrp01”,

“MAS-SUS01”,

“MAS-ACS01”,

“MAS-CA01”,

“MAS-ADFS01”,

“MAS-ASql01”,

“MAS-Gwy01”,

“MAS-SLB01”,

“MAS-NC01”,

“MAS-BGPNAT01”

Fabric servers can be added or removed from the array list if desired. The script will look for the OMS agent (MMASetup-AMD64.exe) in C:\OMS\ on the Azure Stack host. Ensure you create an OMS folder on your Azure Stack host and download the OMS agent to it. This script also copies the OMS agent to C:\Windows\Temp on each Fabric server. Ensure there is enough free space on the C drive on all of your fabric servers.

.PARAMETER OMSWorkSpaceID
This is Guid ID for your OMS workspace, it can be found in the OMS portal at: https://mms.microsoft.com >> Overview >> Settings >> Connected Sources >> Windows Servers

.PARAMETER OMSKey
This is the OMS API key for your OMS workspace. You can use the primary or secondary key. These keys can be found in the OMS portal at:
https://mms.microsoft.com >> Overview >> Settings >> Connected Sources >> Windows Servers

.INPUTS
None

.OUTPUTS
None

.NOTES
Script Name: AzureStackFabrickOMSAgentInstall.ps1
Version: 1.0
Author: Cloud and Data Center Management MVP – Steve Buchanan
Website: www.buchatech.com
Creation Date: 1-1-2017
Purpose/Change: Install OMS agents on Azure Stack Fabric servers.
Updates: None

.EXAMPLE
.\AzureStackFabricOMSAgentInstall.ps1 -OMSWorkSpaceID “20d4dd92-53cf-41ff-99b0-7acb6c84beedsr” -OMSKey “aazedscsjwh52834u510350423tjjwgogh9w34thg2ui==”
#>

The script can be downloaded here:
https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/Azure-Stack-Fabric-OMS-3dac666c

To kick off the script run from PowerShell ISE or a PowerShell console. If you run from ISE you will be prompted for the workspace ID and the key. If you run from a PowerShell console run this syntax to kick it off:

.\AzureStackFabricOMSAgentInstall.ps1 -OMSWorkSpaceID “YOURWORKSPACEID” -OMSKey “YOUROMSKEY”

The script will kick off, building an array of the Azure Stack VM’s, looping through each of them to copy over the OMS agent, and then install the OMS agent setting the OMS workspace ID and key.

The script will detect if an OMS agent is already installed and will skip that server as shown in the following screenshot.

Otherwise the script will install the OMS agent as shown in the following screenshot.

The following screenshot shows the script running in a PowerShell console vs ISE.

You will be prompted when running the script for credentials. Use Azurestack\azurestackadmin as shown in the following screenshot.

After the OMS agent is installed you should be able to log onto any of the Azure Stack VM’s and see the OMS agent in control panel as shown in the following screenshots.

You can also log onto OMS and see your Azure Stack servers listed under connected computers.

Azure Stack fabric servers wire data:

My Azure Stack host in OMS Service Map:

Happy Stacking and OMS’ing!

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Azure or Azure Stack “Write Once, Deploy Anywhere” Update

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A while back I wrote a blog post about being able to take one IaaS VM Azure Resource Manager (ARM) template and deploy it to both Azure or Azure Stack. This blog post included a JSON file and the PowerShell to do this. The idea for that came from needing to set up a cool and working demo for MMS 2016 and the need to showcase the power of Microsoft’s HybridCloud. Here is a link to that original blog post:

Write once, deploy anywhere (Azure or Azure Stack)

Today I have finished updating the PowerShell and ARM template/JSON file to be more streamlined and to work with TP2. Here is the link to download these:Here are the updates:

https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/Create-VM-on-Azure-or-3c6d0420

Here are the updates:

  • The JSON and PowerShell script have been modified to work with Azure Stack TP2.
  • This script now utilizes the connection PowerShell module AzureStack.Connect.psm1 from Azure Stack tools.
  • This is included with the download of this script and JSON file on TechNet Gallery.
  • The script is hard coded to look locally to import the AzureStack.Connect.psm1 module.
  • Streamlined the JSON file and PowerShell script.
  • The script no longer prompts for the publicDNS name. It is now automatically set to the same as the vmname.
  • The script no longer prompts for the storage account name. It is automatically set to vmnamestorage.
  • The script no longer prompts for the resourcegroup name. This is now automatically set to vmname-RG.
  • By default this script now uses a JSON file hosted on Github. This is set in the $templateFilePath variable as shown on the next line.
  • To keep it to the local directory just use the JSON file name.

GITHUB: $templateFilePath = “https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Buchatech/Azure-AzureStackVM/master/AzureandAzureStack.json”
LOCAL: $templateFilePath = “AzureandAzureStack.json“

This will be my last blog post of 2016. See you next year folks…..

Happy Stacking!

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Detailed SQL RP Azure Stack TP2 Deploy & Config

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Microsoft has made a new version of the SQL resource provider (RP) for Azure Stack TP2 available. It can be found here in the documentation: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-stack/azure-stack-sql-resource-provider-deploy. This RP is an add-on for Azure Stack and allows you to offer SQL as PaaS.

This is a great SQL self-service scenario for Hybrid Cloud. The aforementioned link contains documentation on how to deploy the SQL RP. There are some “Gotchas” with the RP and some other information that is important when deploying and configuring this RP.

I am going to walk through my deployment and configuring experience covering the “Gotchas” and other important information in this blog post. This post will be broken out into the following sections:

  • Deployment
  • RP Configuration
  • Offer/Plan Setup
  • Tenant provisioning of SQL PaaS

Ok. Now let’s dive into it.

– DEPLOYMENT –

Before you begin go to the document link and review the RP documentation. You can download the RP on this page from the Download the SQL Server RP installer executable file link.

Once the RP is downloaded extract the files and scripts by running AzureStack.Sql.5.11.251.0.exe. You should have the following:

mastp2-sql-rp-1

Now from an elevated PowerShell window run DeploySQLProvider.ps1.

NOTE: Important this should not be run from PowerShell ISE. It fails when it is run from ISE and you may end up with a partial deployment that requires cleanup.

NOTE: Also you can specify a local location for the SQL 2014 SP1 Enterprise Evaluation ISO if you have it downloaded already. To do this run the script with a parameter of -DependencyFilesLocalPath. If not specified the ISO will be downloaded during deployment. I prefer to let the script download it as a part of the deployment.

This script will do the following:

The script will prompt you to input local admin account info. Note that the password you input here will also be used for the SQL SA account.

mastp2-sql-rp-2

The script will then prompt you for your Azure Active Directory tenant name. This is YOURDOMAIN.onmicrosoft.com.

You will then be prompted for an Azure Active Directory account. This should be the account you deployed Azure Stack TP2 with. This will be used to access Azure Stack and create stuff such as the resource provider, resource group and other resources needed by the RP.

mastp2-sql-rp-4

You need to enter a resource group name. You can leave the default if you want.

mastp2-sql-rp-5

You will then be prompted for the SQL server VM Name. Ignore the title of the pop-up here.

mastp2-sql-rp-6

The script will then run through all of its steps. Here is what the script does as detailed in the official documentation:

  • If necessary, download a compatible version of Azure PowerShell.
  • Create a wildcard certificate to secure communication between the resource provider and Azure Resource Manager.
  • Download an evaluation build of SQL Server SP1 from the internet or from a local file share.
  • Upload the certificate and all other artifacts to a storage account on your Azure Stack.
  • Publish gallery package so that you can deploy SQL database through the gallery.
  • Deploy a VM using the default Windows Server 2012 R2 image that comes with Azure Stack.
  • Register a local DNS record that maps to your resource provider VM.
  • Register your resource provider with the local Azure Resource Manager.
  • Connect the resource provider to the SQL server instance on the RP VM

As the script runs you will see it run through each of the steps with detail and status. Be patient. I have had this take anywhere from 30 minutes to 45 minutes. Good time to go take a break.

mastp2-sql-rp-7

Once the script is done it will show that the installation is successful as shown in the following screenshot.

mastp2-sql-rp-8

NOTE: You could run the deployment script with the required parameters to avoid the prompts. For example:
DeploySQLProvider.ps1 -AadTenantDirectoryName “YOURDOMAIN.onmicrosoft.com” -AzCredential “user@YOURDOMAIN.onmicrosoft.com” -LocalCredential “username”

If for some reason the RP deployment fails you will need to view the logs to troubleshoot. Logging will be found in: LOCATIONOFYOURDOWNLOADEDRP\SQL PaaS RP\Logs in the following format DeploySQLProvider.ps1_20161205-171516.txt as shown in the following screenshot.

mastp2-sql-rp-9

– RP CONFIGURATION –

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Azure Stack Deployment…No KVM…No Problem

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When deploying Azure Stack (TP2) you may not have a KVM, a physical monitor, or maybe you just don’t want to use either with the host. Well there is a solution for this. You can utilize a Windows setup answer file for an unattended installation. What this will do is automate the Windows Setup for you. For Azure Stack you basically just need to input the administrator password. 🙂

Microsoft has put together an answer file and a PowerShell script that enables you to inject an answer file into CloudBuilder.vhdx before deploying Azure Stack. What this will do is enter info on the Windows setup screen for you so that you don’t have to have a KVM or physical monitor attached to the host.  You can just wait for the host to reboot and then RDP in. This unattended answer file and script is a part of the AzureStack-Tools. The AzureStack-Tools have some great resources in the repository and I will be blogging about more of them in the future.

There are basically 2 steps to inject this answer file into your Azure Stack VHDX. These are:

Step 1:

Go and download the Deployment tools files manually onto your Azure Stack host from here:

https://github.com/Azure/AzureStack-Tools/tree/master/Deployment

Or run this PowerShell from your Azure Stack host:

# Variables
$Uri = ‘https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Azure/AzureStack-Tools/master/Deployment/‘
$LocalPath = ‘YOURLOCATION:\AzureStack_TP2_SupportFiles’

# Create folder
New-Item $LocalPath -Type directory

# Download files
‘BootMenuNoKVM.ps1’, ‘PrepareBootFromVHD.ps1’, ‘Unattend.xml’, ‘unattend_NoKVM.xml’ | foreach { Invoke-WebRequest ($uri + $_) -OutFile ($LocalPath + ‘\’ + $_) }

Be sure to set $LocalPath to your location.

Step 2:

NOTE: You need to have the CloudBuilder.vhdx downloaded to your Azure Stack host and it cannot be mounted.

From within PowerShell navigate to the directory you downloaded the deployment tools to and run this

.\PrepareBootFromVHD.ps1 -CloudBuilderDiskPath YOURDRIVE:\CloudBuilder.vhdx -ApplyUnattend

Be sure to point the script to the location containing your CloudBuilder.vhdx before running this.

You will be prompted to enter the password you want to use for the local administrator account.

applyasunattended1

You will see the bcdedit command execution and output as shown in the following screenshot. This saves you the step of modifying the bcdedit. The CloudBuilder.vhdx will also be mounted. You will then be asked to confirm a reboot also as shown in the following screenshot.

applyasunattended2

Before you reboot if you are interested you can go see the unattend.xml file that was created. This is the answer file that will be used. This is shown in the following screenshot.

applyasunattended3

The host will be rebooted. When it comes back online you will be able to RDP in. You will then be able to kick off the Azure Stack deployment.

Happy Azure Stacking!!!

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Azure Stack TP2 deployment failure 60.120.123

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I recently deployed the new Azure Stack TP2 release. This install is way better. I did run into one small issue during the deployment. Below is what I ran into and the solution.

Failure in Deployment log:

2016-11-18 02:18:36 Error    1> Action: Invocation of step 60.120 failed. Stopping invocation of action plan.

Finding the root of the failure:

When walking back the step index in the summary xml log the error landed on step 60.120.123.

-<Task EndTimeUtc="2016-11-18T08:15:23.1042963Z" Status="Error" StartTimeUtc="2016-11-18T08:10:40.5896841Z" ActionType="Deployment-Phase4-ConfigureWAS" RolePath="Cloud">

-<Action EndTimeUtc=”2016-11-18T08:15:23.1042963Z” Status=”Error” StartTimeUtc=”2016-11-18T08:10:40.5896841Z” Type=”Deployment-Phase4-ConfigureWAS” Scope=”Internal”>

-<Steps>

-<Step EndTimeUtc=”2016-11-18T08:15:23.1042963Z” Status=”Error” StartTimeUtc=”2016-11-18T08:10:40.5896841Z” Name=”(Katal) Configure WAS VMs” Description=”Configures Windows Azure Stack on the guest VMs.” Index=”123“>

-<Task EndTimeUtc=”2016-11-18T08:15:23.1042963Z” Status=”Error” StartTimeUtc=”2016-11-18T08:10:40.5896841Z” RolePath=”Cloud\Fabric\WAS” InterfaceType=”Configure”>

-<Exception>

<Message>Function ‘ConfigureWAS’ in module ‘Roles\WAS\WAS.psd1’ raised an exception: Time out has expired and the operation has not been completed. at Stop-WebServices, D:\WAP\Setup\Scripts\Configure-AzureStackMasd.ps1: line 699 at Restart-WebServices, D:\WAP\Setup\Scripts\Configure-AzureStackMasd.ps1: line 712 at Invoke-Main, D:\WAP\Setup\Scripts\Configure-AzureStackMasd.ps1: line 649 at <ScriptBlock>, D:\WAP\Setup\Scripts\Configure-AzureStackMasd.ps1: line 738 at <ScriptBlock>, <No file>: line 21</Message>

<StackTrace> at CloudEngine.Actions.PowerShellHost.Invoke(InterfaceParameters parameters, Object legacyConfigurationObject, CancellationToken token) at CloudEngine.Actions.InterfaceTask.Invoke(Configuration roleConfiguration, Object legacyConfigurationObject, MultiLevelIndexRange indexRange, CancellationToken token, Dictionary`2 runtimeParameter)</StackTrace>

<Raw>CloudEngine.Actions.InterfaceInvocationFailedException: Function ‘ConfigureWAS’ in module ‘Roles\WAS\WAS.psd1’ raised an exception: Time out has expired and the operation has not been completed. at Stop-WebServices, D:\WAP\Setup\Scripts\Configure-AzureStackMasd.ps1: line 699 at Restart-WebServices, D:\WAP\Setup\Scripts\Configure-AzureStackMasd.ps1: line 712 at Invoke-Main, D:\WAP\Setup\Scripts\Configure-AzureStackMasd.ps1: line 649 at <ScriptBlock>, D:\WAP\Setup\Scripts\Configure-AzureStackMasd.ps1: line 738 at <ScriptBlock>, <No file>: line 21 at CloudEngine.Actions.PowerShellHost.Invoke(InterfaceParameters parameters, Object legacyConfigurationObject, CancellationToken token) at CloudEngine.Actions.InterfaceTask.Invoke(Configuration roleConfiguration, Object legacyConfigurationObject, MultiLevelIndexRange indexRange, CancellationToken token, Dictionary`2 runtimeParameter)</Raw>

</Exception>

</Task>

</Step>
Solution:

The first option is to re-run the deployment from the specific failed step. Do this by using the following syntax:

Import-Module C:\CloudDeployment\CloudDeployment.psd1 -Force

Import-Module C:\CloudDeployment\ECEngine\EnterpriseCloudEngine.psd1 -Force

Invoke-EceAction -RolePath Cloud -ActionType Deployment -Start 60.120.123 -Verbose

The second option for this specific issue is to re-run the deployment with network parameters included. Use the following Syntax:

.\InstallAzureStackPOC.ps1 -AdminPassword $adminpass -AADAdminCredential $aadcred -AADDirectoryTenantName X.onmicrosoft.com -NatIPv4Subnet 192.168.5.0/24 -NatIPv4Address 192.168.5.3 -NatIPv4DefaultGateway 192.168.5.1 -EnvironmentDNS 192.168.5.1 -Verbose

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Fun @ the MVP Summit 2016

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This year at the MVP Summit was a great one.

I learned a lot of stuff mostly about OMS, System Center, and Azure Stack.

I cannot talk about any of it. 🙂

I can however talk about some of the fun times we had and share some pictures.

 

First picture….a warm welcome to MVP’s from around the world.

image001

Here is a picture of the US MVPs at the summit!

all-us-mvps

Me at the Microsoft Enterprise Engineering Center in Redmond.

image003

image005

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Download all Azure Stack Ignite 2016 decks

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Mattias Fors has a post with a PowerShell script that can be used to download all Microsoft Ignite 2016 slide decks. The blog post is here: https://deploywindows.info/2016/09/30/download-ignite-2016-slidedecks,

You can use this script to download all the Azure Stack session decks.

2016-10-04-14_59_34-windows-powershell-ise

Just change if ($item.title –notlike “Re:*”) to if ($item.title -like “*Azure Stack*”) in the script and run it. It will place them in C:\Ignite2016Slidedecks.

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Enjoy!

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New Azure Stack Survival Guide

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As shown this week at Microsoft Ignite 2016 Azure Stack has come along way. TP2 has been released with new functionality and a timeline for Azure Stack has been announced.

Also we have seen some new blogs on TP2, some third party solutions coming, vendors demoing it on their hardware, and some new scripts and tools.

There is so much movement now around Azure Stack both from Microsoft and the community. It can be hard to keep up with all the information and resources for Azure Stack. To help with this I have started an Azure Stack Survival Guide on TechNet. Please go contribute to this and use it as a reference. Here is the link:

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/35810.azure-stack-survival-guide.aspx

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