Creating Network Interface using PowerShell

1st Mar 2022 ~ João Paulo Costa ~ Leave a comment

Hey folks,

Continuing our series of articles on how to create resources in Azure using PowerShell, let’s talk about creating the network interface using PowerShell, creating the network interface and assigning it to a VM and associating it to a VNET is easier via shell command.

Now let’s assign some variables to create the network interface.

$RGName= “RG_GETPRACTICAL”
$NIC1=”Nic-GP-VM-01″
$LOCATION= “UKSouth”
$VNETNAME=”VNet-GETPRACTICAL”
$subnetIndex=0

This “SubnetIndex” variable is very important in the creation process, as it will identify each of your VNETs within your environment. In the case of this article I have a single VNET so I am considering the value “0”, but if you need to pull this value, just run a “Get-AzVirtualNetwork” with the add-ons such as resource group and VNET name.

Now let’s validate if the network exists within the environment.

$VNET=Get-AzVirtualNetwork -Name $VNETName -ResourceGroupName $RGName

Next we will create a public IP for the network interface.

$PIP=New-AzPublicIpAddress -Name $NIC1 -ResourceGroupName $RGName -Location $LOCATION -AllocationMethod Dynamic

Finally, we will create the network interface associating the public IP and the VNET that exists within our environment.

$NIC=New-AzNetworkInterface -Name $NIC1 -ResourceGroupName $RGName -Location $LOCATION -SubnetId $vnet.Subnets[$subnetIndex].Id -PublicIpAddressId $PIP.Id

Your network interface has now been successfully created.

Thanks guys and until the next post!

Joao Paulo Costa

Creating Virtual Network using PowerShell

13th Feb 2022 ~ João Paulo Costa ~ Leave a comment

Continuing from the last article, today we are going to create a virtual network to allocate Azure resources and leave it in a secure pattern. In this scope, I’m setting up the network with the segmented subnets:

BackEnd: 172.16.1.0/26
FrontEnd: 172.16.1.64/26
DMZ: 172.16.1.128/28
Gateway: 172.16.1.144/28

Before starting to create the Azure network structure, let’s understand how a network in Azure works.

In Azure, when we create a network, we first choose the “Address Space” that would be an IP block that we would use inside our virtual network and within this block we will consider that each “Subnet” will be a piece of this block, according to the drawing below.

After logging into the “Cloud Shell” select PowerShell, let’s assign some variables to create the network.

$RGName= “RG_GETPRACTICAL”
$LOCATION= “UKSOUTH”
$NameVnet=”VNet-GETPRACTICAL

These variables are for choosing the resource group where we will provision, the location and the name of your virtual network.

Now let’s assign the network settings pointing the “Address Block”, in this case the Address Space 172.16.1.0/24 with 256 hots.

New-AzVirtualNetwork -Name $NameVnet -ResourceGroupName $RGName -Location $location -AddressPrefix 172.16.1.0/24

See that it has been provisioned but does not contain subnets. now let’s assign some variables. This variable is to validate if the network exists within the environment.

$VirtualNetwork = Get-AzVirtualNetwork -Name $NameVnet -ResourceGroupName $rgName

After validating the existing network, let’s add the subnets as shown in the examples below.

Add-AzVirtualNetworkSubnetConfig -Name BackEnd -VirtualNetwork $VirtualNetwork -AddressPrefix 172.16.1.0/26

Next, let’s add the rest of the network scope.

Add-AzVirtualNetworkSubnetConfig -Name FrontEnd -VirtualNetwork $VirtualNetwork -AddressPrefix 172.16.1.64/26
Add-AzVirtualNetworkSubnetConfig -Name DMZ -VirtualNetwork $VirtualNetwork -AddressPrefix 172.16.1.128/28
Add-AzVirtualNetworkSubnetConfig -Name GatewaySubnet -VirtualNetwork $VirtualNetwork -AddressPrefix 172.16.1.144/28

Now let’s run the “Set” command to add the set of subnets that were assigned above.

Set-AzVirtualNetwork -VirtualNetwork $VirtualNetwork

Once your virtual network has been successfully created with its segmented subnets, let’s go to the portal to validate it.

That’s all for today folks, until the next post.

Joao Costa

Creating a Storage Account using PowerShell

31st Jan 2022 ~ João Paulo Costa ~ 2 Comments

Hey everyone,

Today we are going to create a Storage Account for any kind of use and inside this storage account we are going to create a blob for logs and a file share.

In the last post we created a resource group, where we will provision resources during this and the next posts.

Open the Azure Cloud Shell, then choose your subscription, if the cloud shell is already open, we will add the following variables, with the information:

$RGNAME= “RG_GETPRACTICAL”
$LOCATION= “UKSOUTH”
$STRGACCNAME= “strggetpractical01”
$TypeSTRG= “Standard_LRS”

Then we will execute the command “New-AZStorageAccount” to create the storage from the variables assigned above.

New-AzStorageAccount -ResourceGroupName $RGNAME -Name $STRGACCNAME -Type $TypeSTRG -Location $LOCATION

The storage was successfully created.

With the storage created, we are going to create a container to allocate the “Logs” of our environment, for that we are going to assign some variables as well.

$STORAGEACCOUNT = Get-AzStorageAccount -ResourceGroupName $RGNAME -Name $STRGACCNAME
$CONTAINERNAME = “logs”
$CTX = $storageAccount.Context

After assigning the variables, let’s run the following command “New-AzStorageContainer” to create the container.

New-AzStorageContainer -Name $containerName -Context $ctx -Permission blob

Your container was successfully created.

Last but not least let’s create a “File Share” with the following variables.

$STORAGEACCOUNT = Get-AzStorageAccount -ResourceGroupName “RG_GETPRACTICAL” -Name “strggetpractical01”

$storageKey = (Get-AzStorageAccountKey -ResourceGroupName $storageAccount.ResourceGroupName -Name $storageAccount.StorageAccountName | select -first 1).Value

$storageContext = New-AzStorageContext -StorageAccountName $storageAccount.StorageAccountName -StorageAccountKey $storageKey

New-AzureStorageShare -Name “getpracticalshare” -Context $storageContext

The File Share was created successfully, now let’s check the container and the file share that were created.

Container for Logs:

File Share for files:

That’s all for today guys, until the next post!

Joao Costa

Creating Resource Group using Powershell

17th Jan 2022 ~ João Paulo Costa ~ Leave a comment

Hey guys, how are you?

The idea is to learn how to create the resources and finally create an environment with all the resources together.

To start the configuration we have two ways, use the “Azure Cloud Shell” or install the “AZ Module” of powershell.

AZ Module Installation: Powershell Configuration

Access to Azure Cloud Shell: //shell.azure.com/

For this articles I will use the Azure Cloud Shell.

Let’s start by accessing Cloud Shell, then type in your subscription credentials.

Now let’s create two variables, one indicating the name for the resource group and another indicating the region where we will create the resources.
We will work with variables to facilitate the creation of command lines, in this way we can create complex scripts based on variables.
Let’s create two variables, one with the name of the resource group and the other with the region where we will create the resource group.

$RGNAME= “RG_GETPRACTICAL”
$LOCATION= “UKSOUTH”

After creating the variable, let’s create the command line.

New-AzResourceGroup -Name $RGNAME -Location $LOCATION

As you can see, we are executing the command to create a new resource group with the name given in the variable and with the location we put, in my case I am creating it in “UK South“.

Now you can create the group directly with the “Tag” or make an update on the created group.

To create or update the resource group and assign “Tags“, we will give a name and a value to this tag, according to the command below.

New-AzResourceGroup -Name $RGNAME -Location $LOCATION -Tag @{Department=”IT”}

In the image below, only the update was executed, it asks to confirm if you are going to do the update or not.

Your resource group is now created and tagged.

Thanks guys and until the next post!

Azure: Creating a Windows 11 VM

18th Oct 2021 ~ João Paulo Costa ~ Leave a comment

Hi Guys,

In today’s article I will be brief, but I want to demonstrate a subject that is well up to date: How to create a vm with Windows 11 through Cloud Shell in Azure portal.

Let’s go straight to practice: Log into the Azure portal and hit the Cloud Shell icon located on the right side of the search bar.

If you have not yet used the Cloud Shell, on the first access a Resource Group will be created for the Cloud Shell to use it. In the left corner it is also possible to choose between PowerShell or Bash commands (In case you are familiar with Linux), for this example I will use PowerShell command.

Okay, the next step will be to create a resource group for this virtual machine.

Now run the following commands to create your virtual machine

az vm create –resource-group GetPractical –name VMWindows11 –image windows-11-Preview –public-ip-sku Standard –admin-username azureuser –admin-password “GetPractical@Windows11”

All other parameters like disk, cpu, vnet and etc will be created automatically. If you need to customize, you will also need to customize the command or create via GUI portal.

This process should take a few minutes, but once it is finished you will be able to see in the portal that the VM was created successfully.

It’s important to say that at the time I deployed this vm, Windows 11 was still in preview. If at the time of this post the preview version is no longer available, access the following Microsoft docs :

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/windows/cli-ps-findimage

Finally, run the mstsc /v <Public IP Address> command to access your virtual machine with Windows 11 and the result should be as follows:

And that folks, if you have any doubts, leave them in the comments.

Joao Costa