AzureAutomation.md

Automated shutdown using Azure Automation

Microsoft Azure Automation provides a way for users to automate the manual tasks that are performed in a cloud environment. One simple task is to automatically shutdown virtual machines or turn on them by using a schedule. This is quite important to save costs while the whole virtual lab is not being used, such as holidays.

Follow these steps to setup an Azure Automation account to setup a shutdown/start schedule for the desired virtual machines.

Create Automation Account

1. Click New > Add Automation Account
2. Fill the gaps and select suitable options for your environment
   

In order to authenticate runbooks which admin ARM resources, we need a Run As Account.
When you create an Automation account in the Azure portal, you automatically create two authentication entities:

• A Run As account: This account creates a service principal in Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) and a certificate. It also assigns the Contributor role-based access control (RBAC), which manages Resource Manager resources by using runbooks.
• A Classic Run As account: This account uploads a management certificate, which is used to manage classic resources by using runbooks.

If you see the following warning in the Add Automation Account blade, this is because your account is not a member of the Subscription Admins role and co-admin of the subscription.

Runbooks

A runbook is a set of tasks that perform some automated process in Azure Automation.

1. YourAutomationAccount >
   
2. Runbooks > Browse Gallery
   

Gisela Torres created a parallel shutdown/Start ARM VM's by Resource Group runbook.
In this project we have edited the script to use Run As Account in order to logging, thus we can avoid logging with credentials. It should look like this:

workflow Shutdown-Start-ARM-VMs-Parallel
{
    Param(
        [Parameter(Mandatory=$true)]
        [String]
        $ResourceGroupName,
        [Parameter(Mandatory=$true)]
        [Boolean]
        $Shutdown
    )

    $connectionName = "AzureRunAsConnection"    
    	
    # Get the connection "AzureRunAsConnection"
    $servicePrincipalConnection=Get-AutomationConnection -Name $connectionName         

    "Logging in to Azure..."
    Add-AzureRmAccount `
    -ServicePrincipal `
    -TenantId $servicePrincipalConnection.TenantId `
    -ApplicationId $servicePrincipalConnection.ApplicationId `
    -CertificateThumbprint $servicePrincipalConnection.CertificateThumbprint 

    $vms = Get-AzureRmVM -ResourceGroupName $ResourceGroupName;
	
    Foreach -Parallel ($vm in $vms){
		
        if($Shutdown){
            Write-Output "Stopping $($vm.Name)";		
            Stop-AzureRmVm -Name $vm.Name -ResourceGroupName $ResourceGroupName -Force;
        }
        else{
            Write-Output "Starting $($vm.Name)";		
            Start-AzureRmVm -Name $vm.Name -ResourceGroupName $ResourceGroupName;
        }
    }
}

If you want to know more..

Azure Automation