I write this guide to consolidate the automation methods on Azure. It will be updated to date.
With Azure, we will have 03 ways to do automation tasks on Azure: 1. using Azure Resource Group Template 2. using Azure powershell SDK / Azure Automation Service 3. using third-party orchestration tool: puppet, chef, ansible
Azure Automation Service focus on 3 primary tasks to interact with Azure Services:
+ Deployment
+ Provisioning
+ Life cycle Management
It supports the following Azure services (almost of them are IaaS):
+ Azure SQL Database Service
+ Microsoft Azure Storage Service
+ Microsoft Azure Websites
+ Microsoft Azure Virtual Machines
+ Microsoft Azure Cloud Services
Regions supported (Sep 09 2016):
+ East Us 2
+ South Central US
+ North europe
+ West europe
+ Southeast Asia
+ Japan East
+ Australia Southeast
+ Canada central
why azure automation?
+ window powershell workflow: You can leverage your current expertise and investment in Windows PowerShell.
+ End-to-end automation service: With Azure Automation, you can automate end-to-end processes
+ Off-premises redundancy backed storage: It’s often useful to have workflows available to an administrator anywhere in the world.
+ Runbook authoring and importing
Some scenarios:
+ Disaster recovery
+ High availability
+ Provisioning
+ Monitoring
+ Deploying patches
+ Managing VMs
+ Running backups
There are 2 main components:
+ Runbook
+ assets