This Blog post is about Azure Arc, how to set this up and get you started with Azure Arc. For customers who want to simplify complex and distributed environments across on-premises, edge and multi cloud, Azure Arc enables deployment of Azure services anywhere and extends Azure management to any infrastructure.
So Azure Arc is not a replacement for the old Azure Server manager tools! So no remote RDP or open MMC only log analytics, policy’s, CLI etc. https://robertsmit.wordpress.com/2016/08/25/azure-server-management-tools-manage-your-servers-from-anywhere-servermgmt-azure-smt/
That could be a really nice add on to Windows Admin center #WAC best tools available in Azure and on premise.
The hybrid management could be done with Windows admin center on a VM running into Azure. https://robertsmit.wordpress.com/tag/windows-admin-center/
Azure Arc is in preview At this time, there is no cost to use this service. as long as it is in Preview. Configuring this is been done from the Azure portal. And get your non Azure servers also connected to Policy’s and security center.
Starting with Azure Arc is done in a few easy steps.
Sign up for the preview https://aka.ms/hybridmachineportal
I signed up for the Organize & govern across environments so go to manage servers to get into the next menu.
Sign up for the preview https://aka.ms/hybridmachineportal
First we need to add the Server ( register the server to Azure Arc)
Adding the server to Azure Arc can be done with a provided PowerShell script
The downloaded script contains the following.
$sp = New-AzADServicePrincipal -DisplayName "Arc-for-servers" -Role "Azure Connected Machine Onboarding"
$sp
New-AzRoleAssignment -RoleDefinitionName "Azure Connected Machine Onboarding" -ServicePrincipalName $sp.ApplicationId
$credential = New-Object pscredential -ArgumentList "temp", $sp.Secret
$credential.GetNetworkCredential().password
# Download the package
Invoke-WebRequest -Uri https://aka.ms/AzureConnectedMachineAgent -OutFile AzureConnectedMachineAgent.msi
# Install the package
msiexec /i AzureConnectedMachineAgent.msi /l*v installationlog.txt /qn | Out-String
As you can see the agent is downloaded and installed as a new App registration so make sure you have to proper Azure Rights when doing this.
Adding this to a resource group and a Region.
Make sure you select the proper OS.
I add also the server Tags to the servers just as I do this for the Azure VM’s.
Now we can download the complete PowerShell script
# Download the package
Invoke-WebRequest -Uri https://aka.ms/AzureConnectedMachineAgent -OutFile AzureConnectedMachineAgent.msi
# Install the package
msiexec /i AzureConnectedMachineAgent.msi /l*v installationlog.txt /qn | Out-String
# Run connect command
& "$env:ProgramFiles\AzureConnectedMachineAgent\azcmagent.exe" connect –resource-group "MVPRSG-Azure-Arc" –tenant-id "xxxxxxxxxxxx" –location "westus2" –subscription-id "xxxxxxxxxxxx" –tags "Arc=Server-DC01"
After running this script there is a URL https://microsoft.com/devicelogin and you will need the CODE provided by the script
https://microsoft.com/devicelogin
This will add the Azure AD and you will need to sign in.
When correctly signed in the message is successfully.
Looking in the Portal the machine is Connected.
At this point you can set Azure policy’s and send data to the Azure log analytics.
In the Azure resources Overview you can see the Servers and the Type with a different Icon.
For Now Azure Arc is a bit limited for the windows servers, If this will be combined with the Old Server Management tools then you have a great option to manage the on premise servers. Currently it is still in preview so I expect a lot of changes during the year.
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Windows virtual desktop is GA and already there are tons of blog post on how to install windows virtual desktop, first steps on windows virtual desktop.
I see a huge demand on WVD, Customers wants to try this and see the difference between the traditional RDS setup. And yes its all Azure but thanks can be build and tested. and there comes all the different builds and setups. Different places to go, and management is a pain no GUI available from Microsoft there is only PowerShell. Not a bad thing but testing the windows virtual desktop leaves me multiple tenants and host pools dead.
Well I thought lets do a Step By Step windows virtual desktop, Well not exactly I’ll believe you can follow the wizard in Azure and Do all the prereq’s by your self. In this blog post it could be that not all host pools and tenant names are the same as I had a lot of test WVD configs.
As we all know the Infrastructure that is needed for windows virtual desktop, we also know that a lot can go wrong and then where to look ?
So to start with windows virtual desktop I created a little Powershell script that does step 1
Install-Module -Name Microsoft.RDInfra.RDPowerShell
Import-Module -Name Microsoft.RDInfra.RDPowerShell
#Setup Settings, TenantName of WVD tenant, Hostpool name
$Hostpool = “WVDpool01”
$HPFriendlyName = “Win10 + O356”
$TenantName = “ClusterMVP”
$TenantGroupName = “Default Tenant Group”
$AppGroupName = “Desktop Application Group”
$AadTenantId = “111111-2222222-33333”
$subscriptionId = “111111-2222222-33333″
$UPN=”adminclu@clustermvp.local”
#Sign in to Windows Virtual Desktop
Add-RdsAccount -DeploymentUrl “https://rdbroker.wvd.microsoft.com”
#New Tenant Keep in mind that Access rights need to be set before doing the next step.
New-RdsTenant -Name $tenantName -AadTenantId $AadTenantId -AzureSubscriptionId $subscriptionId
#
#Hostpool
#Create new Hostpool
New-RdsHostPool -TenantName $tenantName -FriendlyName $HPFriendlyName -name $hostpool -ValidationEnv $true
Get-RdsHostPool -TenantName $tenantName
When Doing these steps I already got errors not on the script but on the basic steps
Get-RdsTenant : User is not authorized to query the management service.
The user is global admin uber god in Azure and in the domain. Well you need to give the account that you are using for the installation access. in the Virtual Desktop APP.
I like to see what happened so often I use an extra Get- to see the values .
But these errors I hate them, Why can it be so hare to deploy some machines and use RDS, Well it’s a 3 fase installer.
- Granting the Domain + subscription
- Powershell stuff to prep things
- Install Azure VM’s
And then the setup needs to embed in your infrastructure. Think I saw a lot of issues, during the first RDMI rollouts I thought this is complicated a created a full rollout script, but things changed during the program and at some points I could not get windows virtual desktop Installed several tries etc not good,
Tons of failure on all kind of errors samples are below.
—————————————————————————————–
VM has reported a failure when processing extension ‘joindomain’
the error is Deployment error: “VMExtensionProvisioningError”.
Details error message are:
{“code”:”DeploymentFailed”,”message”:
Operation ‘Update VM’ is not allowed on VM ‘FIBWVD-0’ since the VM is marked for deletion.
“The resource operation completed with terminal provisioning state ‘Failed’.”
statusCode”: “Conflict”,
“VM has reported a failure when processing extension ‘joindomain’. Error message:
\”Exception(s) occured while joining Domain
Error message: \\\”DSC Configuration
——————————————————————————————–
Well I have multiple Domain names added to my Azure AD and Running a VM as DC with multiple domain names. Azure Connect syncs them to Azure AD but standard well it depends, That’s why I thought lets create a backwards blog about windows virtual desktop #WVD.
More about errors can be found here
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-desktop/diagnostics-role-service#common-error-scenarios
During all my test I noticed my Tenant Names where in use and different all meshed up. Removing them is easy but also in steps.
First my sample here
Get-RdsHostPool -TenantName ACACOMPUTERS
This shows you the host pools for the login user
get-RdsAppGroup -TenantName ACAComputers -HostPoolName ACA-HostPool
So removing the hostpool is not
Remove-RdsHostPool -TenantName ACAComputers -HostPoolName ACA-HostPool
That seems logical, then lets see the application groups
get-RdsAppGroup -TenantName ACAComputers -HostPoolName ACA-HostPool
There are Two application Groups : the default one and an extra created.
AppGroupName : Desktop Application Group
AppGroupName : MVP-WVD
Remove-RdsAppGroup -TenantName ACAComputers -HostPoolName ACA-HostPool -Name “MVP-WVD” –Verbose
even with the verbose nothing no warning no error.
Remove-RdsHostPool -TenantName ACAComputers -HostPoolName ACA-HostPool -Verbose
Now the Hostpool can be removed and no warning
Setting up a fresh new installation of WVD is easy, but the first setup is a bit painful but if you follow the steps you can’t go wrong.
GO to the https://rdweb.wvd.microsoft.com Add the Azure AD ID keep in mind if you are running a CSP subscription or you are not the owner it may that your account is blocked to create enterprise apps then this will fail and you can’t setup WVD.
Do this for Client and Server
Then give the users access to the Windows Virtual Desktop App, these are the installation accounts.
Open the app and add users or groups.
Now you can sign in and start the deployment
#Sign in to Windows Virtual Desktop
Add-RdsAccount -DeploymentUrl https://rdbroker.wvd.microsoft.com
WVD service principal name Powershell
You can also use a service principal name
#############
Set users or Create service principal name
# create the service principal:
$aadContext = Connect-AzureAD
$svcPrincipal = New-AzureADApplication -AvailableToOtherTenants $true -DisplayName “Windows Virtual Desktop Svc Principal”
$svcPrincipalCreds = New-AzureADApplicationPasswordCredential -ObjectId $svcPrincipal.ObjectId
#Here are the three credentials you should write down and the cmdlets you need to run to get them
$svcPrincipalCreds.Value
$aadContext.TenantId.Guid
$svcPrincipal.AppId
#Set Rolassignment
New-RdsRoleAssignment -RoleDefinitionName “RDS Owner” -ApplicationId $svcPrincipal.AppId -TenantName $tenantName
#Sign in with the service principal
$creds = New-Object System.Management.Automation.PSCredential($svcPrincipal.AppId, (ConvertTo-SecureString $svcPrincipalCreds.Value -AsPlainText -Force))
Add-RdsAccount -DeploymentUrl “https://rdbroker.wvd.microsoft.com” -Credential $creds -ServicePrincipal -AadTenantId $aadContext.TenantId.Guid
This is All perfect But often I noticed that the WVD host where added to the domain but failed in something, the VM was fine and there was a folder with the deployment agent. and this got me thinking what If you install this on what ever OS, You could even use the WVD portal to connect to your own laptop.
Manual ADDING New WVD (Windows virtual desktop) Host to the Pool or a failed on.
The manual add Server to the host pool is also a process when you start with 1 server and add later extra servers to the pool.
but we will need a token to add the WVD host to the pool, like in RDS add the Role not the Role is an agent that is running on the VM
There are several ways to export the key I like them to capture this in screen and to the clipboard.
$WVDToken = New-RdsRegistrationInfo -TenantName $tenantName -HostPoolName $hostpool -ExpirationHours 2
$WVDToken.Token | Set-Clipboard
##
$WVDToken.Token
#When using the Clipboard then use this.
Export-RdsRegistrationInfo -TenantName $tenantName -HostPoolName $hostpool | Select-Object -ExpandProperty Token | Set-Clipboard
Now we have the key but it is only valid for 2 hours.
Now I go to my failed Windows 10 host and start the installation of the Agent.
If you don’t have the Agent installer you can download it. In this case I use a failed WVD host during deployment.
Download and install the Windows Virtual Desktop Agent.
Use the Token in the installer
The next installer is the bootloader
Download and install the Windows Virtual Desktop Agent Bootloader.
Now that the Agent and the Bootloader is installed. We need two more steps.
Download the Windows Virtual Desktop side-by-side stack and run the installer.
As a final step – Download this script to activate the side-by-side stack. Save this as powershell script “ps1” or run this directly.
After running the SxS components you and use the portal https://rdweb.wvd.microsoft.com/webclient/index.html
In this setup I used the Full desktop – This is also default –
Running this in a Window or use the Remote app in your Windows
- Download the Remote Desktop client here.
- Install the client. You don’t need administrator privileges if you are only installing it for your own user account.
- Open the newly installed Remote Desktop app.
- On the Let’s get started screen, click Subscribe to subscribe to a feed.
Installation source on a failed WVD host
[!IMPORTANT] To help secure your Windows Virtual Desktop environment in Azure, we recommend you don’t open inbound port 3389 on your VMs. Windows Virtual Desktop doesn’t require an open inbound port 3389 for users to access the host pool’s VMs. If you must open port 3389 for troubleshooting purposes, we recommend you use just-in-time VM access.
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When I saw this new option I thought well could be interesting, prep some disks in advance and upload later the disk. Looks quicker than staging the vhd first. There are two ways you can bring an on-premises VHD to Azure as a managed disks:
- Stage the VHD into a storage account before converting it into a managed disk.
- Attach an empty managed disk to a virtual machine and do copy.
Both these ways have disadvantage.The first option requires extra storage account to manage while the second option has extra cost of running virtual machine. Direct-upload addresses both these issues and provides a simplified workflow by allowing copy of an on-premises VHD directly as a managed disk. You can use it to upload to Standard HDD, Standard SSD, and Premium SSD managed disks of all the supported sizes. With this new option Migration could speed up and it seems less work.
Now days Microsoft want to do a lot in the Azure CLI, Working with this and personally I like the Azure CLI to do quick things but for testing and building I like the PowerShell options. So in this blog post I show you how to do upload your VHD to a managed Azure disk.
Starting this I noticed the weirdness of PowerShell I did not have the proper options, It seems I run some older versions of the Azure Az module.
SO running new Azure options with PowerShell make sure you run the latest version. This is not needed in the Azure CLI.
I had version 2.7.0 running and I needed 2.8.0 Do a uninstall of the old version
Uninstall-AllModules -TargetModule Az -Version 2.7.0 –Force
Or if you have a lot of old versions running uninstall them all.
$versions = (Get-InstalledModule Az -AllVersions | Select-Object Version)
$versions[0..($versions.Length-2)] | foreach { Uninstall-AllModules -TargetModule Az -Version ($_.Version) -Force }
And of course you can run this in the Azure CLI with the following command
az disk create -n mydiskname1 -g disk1 -l westeurope --for-upload --upload-size-bytes 10737418752 --sku standard_lrs
But where is the fun on doing this, Right.
For creating a Managed disk in the GUI there are only a few steps but then you need to add this to a Virtual machine and copy over the data. time consuming
Lets create a powershell script that will pick the right disk size and upload the VHD to Azure as a Managed disk.
First we need to see what size my VHD file is to make sure the disk has enough disk space.
$vhdSizeBytes = (Get-Item "I:\Hyperv-old\MVPMGTDC01\mvpdc0120161023143512.vhd").length
So I need a disk size of 136367309312
Our next step is create a proper disk configuration. with placement in the correct region and resource group.
#Provide the Azure region where Managed Disk will be located.
$Location = “westeurope”
#Provide the name of your resource group where Managed Disks will be created.
$ResourceGroupName =”rsguploaddisk001”
#Provide the name of the Managed Disk
$DiskName = “mvpdc01-Disk01”
New-AzResourceGroup -Name $ResourceGroupName -Location $location
$diskconfig = New-AzDiskConfig -SkuName ‘Standard_LRS’ -OsType ‘Windows’ -UploadSizeInBytes $vhdSizeBytes -Location $location -CreateOption ‘Upload’
$diskconfig
Now that the configuration is set we can actual create a new Disk.
New-AzDisk -ResourceGroupName $ResourceGroupName -DiskName $DiskName -Disk $diskconfig
Now that the disk is created we can see this in the Azure portal also.
The details of the just created disk.
Comparing the disk configuration this is now empty and the Disk state is ReadyToUpload.
At this point we don’t have access to the disk and we can’t upload the original disk to the Azure Managed disk. Therefore we need to grand access to this disk. This is done in a time frame like 24 hours or shorter it depends on the time that is needed for the upload.
basic default is 24 hours = 86400 seconds but when done we revoke the access.
$diskSas = Grant-AzDiskAccess -ResourceGroupName $ResourceGroupName -DiskName $DiskName -DurationInSecond 86400 -Access ‘Write’
And in the Portal you can see the Ready status is changed to Active Upload.
When looking at the details of the disk in PowerShell we see the disk state of active upload.
$disk = Get-AzDisk -ResourceGroupName $ResourceGroupName -DiskName $DiskName
$disk
Our next step is copy the VHD to the Azure Disk
AzCopy.exe copy "I:\Hyperv-old\MVPMGTDC01\mvpdc0120161023143512.vhd" $diskSas.AccessSAS –blob-type PageBlob
As I did not place any restrictions to the upload It will use my full bandwidth of Internet, this means a full 1Gbps connection.
Now that the Upload is completed we can revoke the access
Revoke-AzDiskAccess -ResourceGroupName $ResourceGroupName -DiskName $DiskName
As you can see the disk state is now unattached and we can create a VM with this disk.
The Disk type can’t be changed at this point but can be changed when the VM is deployed.
Machine is quickly build and depending on the machine type you can change the disk type to SSD
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Recently I did a blog post on the Azure VM size limit and what disk performance you get. Picking the right VM in Azure is important when you use Azure Storage SSD disks, as machines are limited in throughput. With a D64s_V3 and ultra SSD disk I get the 81544 IOPS that’s good but costly the VM is $5K then the disk will cost you also some $$.
This post is not about costs or good or bad but it will show you that picking random resources will cost you more that a selective menu and get even better performance ad a lower cost.
This blog post is just as a reference, measurements in your config may be different, read the blog comments.
https://robertsmit.wordpress.com/2019/07/09/azure-vm-vs-disk-vs-costs-does-size-matter-or-a-higher-price-for-better-specifications-azure-storage-performance/
below is my biggest IOPS number I have seen in Azure with a Diskspd test and this is not bad at all and the cost are not even worse that the D64 this is done with a H16r cost $1,472 per month
###########################################
Good comments are made below in the blog comment the measurements could point to caching. Also always build a solution that is supported by the vendor.
##################################
Getting massive IOPS* in a VM is still not plug and play. (with Caching)
In my former blog post I tested some VM to get the maximum speed and selecting the right Azure VM can save some costs
When using VM’s with disk attached then the storage throughput is important, in a Azure VM cluster with Storage spaces direct the network is also important. Now with SMB storage the VM well it’s a VM but the setup of this VM is more important, what is the Network bandwidth and can it do #RDMA ? Basically a 1Gbps can do 95 Mb/s that’s not bad but we want to do more right.
But what if we use other storage will this be the same or different ? to give a good answer on this I’m doing the same test as I did in the blog post
https://robertsmit.wordpress.com/2019/07/09/azure-vm-vs-disk-vs-costs-does-size-matter-or-a-higher-price-for-better-specifications-azure-storage-performance/
here I got 80.000 IOPS not bad but at what costs. Storage is cheap in Azure but Performance cost a lot. and then the latency of the disks. It is all part of your solution.
In this case I’m using the new Azure NetApp files It’s NFS or SMB and the pricing is different than the Azure disks. Cheaper or more Expensive it al depends on your solution and performance what you need. but your solution may need a different setup, as this is a SMB solution and not a direct attached disk.
A comparison between the Azure Files and the Azure Netapp Files and Azure Disks
Big numbers but it comes with a BUT for 320K IOPS on a 500TB pool times the $0.39 per GB that’s also a big cost So handle with care. but it’s a lot off IOPS.
Azure NetApp Files Comes in 3 options Standard, Premium and Ultra Seems fast.
Well lets test this and see where the difference is between premium and ultra. We add the AzureNetapp files to Our Azure subscription.
For starters the subscription need to be white listed before we can use this. We create NetApp Account and then we create some pools and Disks
Now we have a virtual NetApp Storage device. We can create pools and volumes to work with.
For SMB Connections we need to join the Active Directory first. As we need to create a Fileserver name similar like a SOFS server. This is created in your own Active directory and not in the Azure AD. Fileserver Computer Accounts will be created in your AD
Whit these settings we have a similar configuration as the on premise config with RDMA Hyper-v or S2D or Azurestack HCI with these thoughts we can get big performance goals.
A user account that can create computer objects in the OU. The LDAP structure is without the DC= part and My OU is in the Root so a short syntax.
Here you can see the just created link to the Domain.
Our next step is creating a Capacity pool These can be Large but remember pay per use!
Remember you will pay for the provisioned capacity, and here is the catch the larger the Pool the more IOPS you get. So if you have a tiny application that need performance you need to see what is the right choice.
Now that the Pool is created we can create a volume in the pool, all the basics are similar to the Microsoft Storage Pools.
Create Volume off 100GB in the 4 TB pool. the Costs are 4TB and not the 100GB.
I create a new Storage network, this is also a must a dedicated storage network for the NetApp files. If you are familiar with Storage spaces direct and multichannel SMB then you have a new playground, but less building.
Network is done File server is created and share is created, at this time no ACL’s are available on the share.
When the setup is done we see a File server in the AD structure. Netapp is using only the given name but will add a –XXXX to make the name unique. that makes sense as the deployment will fail on this.
My first test on the 100GB share. Testing this with a Azure VM D2s_v3 Capable of delivering 4000 IOPS on the Disks
That is impressive almost 29.000 IOPS on a simple VM. well in my volumes I have just 4TB so 4x 4000 IOPS not bad
So a bigger machine is not needed than, well now the VM selection should not be on the Disk size but on the network throughput and more network adapters is needed the max out the storage as the D machine is having a 1Gbps nic this is to low for this.
Impressed by the low latency numbers and how easy you got the performance.
Hitting the Network adapter limit 
29K IOPS on a cheap Azure D2 VM that’s not bad at all.
Good performance but I want more lets create some bigger pools and better network machines. Thinking about SMB direct or some big pool to hit real hard the storage to get big numbers. Like the demo’s of Jeff Woolsey @WSV_GUY
Looking into the resource group, here you can see the created resources and two NIC’s that’s resource I created a premium and an Ultra pool.
I can Imagine that this nic will be a throttle, in a big Pool hitting all the data to one NIC.
Let me start a H8 Azure VM this is a new VM better network performance. Should be good. pricing below $1000 monthly
Azure NetApp Files with a Premium 16TB disk
Low Latency good performance, with Azure disk I needed more disks and a bigger VM to get these results.
Same test with Ultra 16T Storage pool
No big changes between the Premium and Ultra and the cost are $0.10 more per GB
So a new test this time with a H16R nic with RDMA with this we can optimize the network performance a bit
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/windows/sizes-hpc#h-series
Well that’s good eh better than good big performance, but I must say this is not the default H16r machine I tweaked it a bit and used the same technique as when you build a Azurestack HCI or Hyper-v over SMB*
the measure results could be partly cached, for facts I should do multiple runs, but all the tests are done only once, as these setups are expensive and testing takes time, I have no benefit on any result good or bad it is just my setup and opinion,
I was to late to grab a decent CPU and nic performance screenshot.
I was planning to the same results on a A9 VM on my Windows Virtual desktop with the FSLogix profiles (user profile disks) but Running these is a A machine compaired a H or N series an NC24r or a ND40 or 24 cost some $ but huge performance. This is something for a next blog post.
But initial test where not better and the A9 VM is more expensive, and gives me thoughts on different options. what and how Can I extend the Azure networks to get the ultimate sweet spot cost vs performance.
I think this is a real good replacement for Azure S2D, its cheaper and faster, Suppose you run a RDS site with lots of User profile disks or Windows virtual desktop with FsLogix, build profiles high available will take you to a storage space direct cluster at least two nodes and 6 Disk. Replacing this with Azure NetApp files could save you some $$ and sure lots of options are in the cloud there and yes you may need a extra network, but if you can offload your network with some extra network adapters and have a storage network to boost the performance, then you have a great solution in the Cloud.
Read the comments below, and always test your setup to see the results before you go into production. Also read the requirements so that your config is supported.
I’m saving my Azure credits to do a massive S2D run with the Azure Ultra disks. Keep in mind all my configs are different and nothing is next next finish and my be not supported.
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