Unable to Connect to VMM in AzurePack after UR install

After upgrading to Update Release 6 (UR6) we got the same issue as seen in earlier UR’s. It’s not possible to connect to VMM in AzurePack so you can’t see your Virtual Machines, Clouds or Networks.

It turned out that when UR6 gets applied to SPF, the bindings are once again messed up. To fix this, just logon to the server hosting SPF and in IIS check the bindings as seen here;

SPF1

The SPF Website is not running and you can see two Bindings.
In my case, one has a certificate and the other doesn’t. So I just remove the binding without a certificate. Then start the Website and everything is working as expected again.

In earlier UR’s I’ve also seen how there is no bindings at all listed here. So you may have to create some binding then.

 

Azure Pack: Add a new user to a plan automatically

Update: It looks like SMA is not executing the script when a new Tenant is created, but rather when a subscription is added to the user.
Trying to get it confirmed from Microsoft if that is a bug that’s been introduced in one of the latest updates. See comments for more details.

Problem: When a new employee for TrueSec (our company) is logging into Azure Pack he has to be added to the “Tenants – TrueSec Employees” plan manually.

Solution: One way is to add a “signup code” to the plan and tell new employees to manually join the plan with that specific code. It could work, but does not feel like the most optimal solution.

The desired way would be if all new employees could be added to that plan automatically. Is that possible?
– Of course it is, with the help of SMA! Let me show one way to do this.

Pre-Requisits: Connection Asset, SMA Runbook, Link Runbook to a tasma_asset1sk.

In my case, I’m using the MgmtSvcAdmin asset which looks like this. But you can also create other types of Connections with working credentials. Just notice that you have to enter the name of the Admin Site server in the Asset, as the script will use that info. And the useraccount specified obviously need access to use the Admin site (to modify the subscriptions).

Add a new Runbook with the script below. In my case, I’m using ADFS to connect to the Admin site, so the script has to generate a ADFS token first.
if you are not using ADFS, you will have to modify the script to use a normal Windows authentication. It’s the most common way to authenticate, so there shouldn’t be any problems finding example code for.

Though, please note that the script is currently matching the new users e-mail address to (in our case) @truesec.com or @truesec.se. If you don’t use ADFS, it’s possible for a user to type any name they want during registration and then possibly get added to a plan they should not have access too.

And finally, add a new Automation Task, you do that under Clouds -> Automation.
Object: SPF Tenant
Action: Create
Runbook: New-Tenant

The script:

I hope this helps you automating things in your environment. If you can think of any other great usages for SMA or have need for automating something. Please make a comment, maybe I’ll be able to assist.

Azure Pack: SMA Script to set a Static MAC Address for New Virtual NICs

When a user is using AzurePack to add additional Virtual Network Adapters to a Virtual Machine, they end up with a Dynamic MAC Address. This is regardless of what the settings are in the VM Template that were used to create the VM. The NIC(s) created at deployment of the VM, will honor the setting in the Template. It’s just when additional NICs are added this happens.

vmnic1

We have had some issues with VM’s using Dynamic MAC Addresses, where they got a new MAC Address after migrating to another host, resulting in Linux machines being unhappy and som other servers getting new DHCP Addresses.

I figured that this could be an excellent task to get more familiar with SMA and use that cool feature of Azure Pack. So I made a script which will execute when a new Network Adapter is added to a VM through AzurePack, and will set the MAC Address to a Static entry and let SCVMM pick one from the pool.

You will need to create a new Runbook called New-NetworkAdapter with tag SPF, and paste the above code into that runbook.

sma1And also add a SMA Connection Asset, with credentials for connecting to SCVMM.
Name the connection VmmConnection. The script will look for a connection object called VmmConnection, use that Username + Password to connect to the SCVMM Server specified in the same connection object.
vmm1

And finally, create an Automated Task of this information. sma2

Please let me know if you find this useful, if you have any issues or suggestions on how to improve my script.