The self-healing environment – PowerShell DSC for your SharePoint Ecosystem – Recap

During my preparations for Dublin I came across many topics in the Azure Automation world I wanted to automate as well. Currently the resources “on how to do this” are limited to the Microsoft Documentations available.

I planned to on-board a newly provisioned virutal machine in place and join this server into my automation account. A process I do on a day to day basis with development environments.

I tend to trash my virtual development machines on a regular basis. This process allows me to be assured that my systems are up to the customers requirement.
This means I upload the customer specific configuration and compile the DSC prior to joining the VM.
If you do already have a configuration in place and want to reuse this, you can go to step number 3.

What is the process of on-boarding a virtual machine to an Automation Account?

0. Login in to your Azure Account


Login-AzureRmAccount

1. Upload your latest DSC configuration to Azure Automation DSC

Uploading a configuration requires you to run the following PowerShell Script.

Import-AzureRmAutomationDscConfiguration -SourcePath "<Full Path to your Configuration>"`
-ResourceGroupName "<Your Resource Group Name>" `
-AutomationAccountName "<Your Automation Account Name>" `
-Published `
-Force `
-Verbose

2. Compile your configuration

After an successful upload you can start the compilation of your configuration. In case the configuration requires parameters, you can ass them into the cmdlet as hashtable:


$dscCompileParameters = @{ }

Start-AzureRmAutomationDscCompilationJob -AutomationAccountName "<Your Automation Account Name >"`
-ConfigurationName "<Name of your configuration>" `
-ResourceGroupName "< Your Resource Group Name>"`
-IncrementNodeConfigurationBuild `
-Parameters $dscCompileParameters `
-Verbose

3. Join a VM to your Azure Automation Account – using PowerShell

Register-AzureRmAutomationDscNode -AzureVMName "<Your VM Name>" `
-ResourceGroupName "< Your Resource Group Name>" `
-AutomationAccountName "<Your Automation Account Name >" `
-RebootNodeIfNeeded $true `
-NodeConfigurationName "<Your Node Configuration Name >" `
-ConfigurationMode "ApplyAndAutocorrect" `
-Verbose