Creating "Classic" Services Using Azure Resource Manager PowerShell Cmdlets

Once upon a time, there was a new cloud service known as Windows Azure. Over time, this cloud service developed with new features, became known more generally as just Azure, embraced the unthinkable from a technology standpoint and also went through a complete platform overhaul. Longstanding Azure users will remember the “classic” portal, with its very…distinctive…user interface. As the range of different services offered on Azure increased and the call for more efficient management tools became almost deafening, Microsoft announced the introduction of a new portal experience and Resource Group Management for Azure resources, both of which are now the de facto means of interacting with Azure today. The old style portal indicated above was officially discontinued earlier this year. In line with these changes, Microsoft introduced new, Resource Manager compatible versions of pretty much every major service available on the “classic” portal…with some notable exceptions. The following “classic” resources can still be created and worked with today using the new Azure portal:

This provides accommodation for those who are still operating compute resources dating back to the days of yonder, allowing you to create and manage resources that may be needed to ensure the continued success of your existing application deployment. In most cases, you will not want to create these “classic” resources as part of new project work, as the equivalent Resource Manager options should be more than sufficient for your needs. The only question mark around this concerns Cloud Services. There is no equivalent Resource Manager resource available currently, with the recommended option for new deployments being Azure Service Fabric instead. Based on my research online, there appears to be quite a feature breadth between both offerings, with Azure Service Fabric arguably being overkill for more simplistic requirements. There also appears to be some uncertainty over whether Cloud Services are technically considered deprecated or not. I would highly recommend reading Andreas Helland’s blog post on the subject and form your own opinion from there.

For both experiences, Microsoft provided a full set of automation tools in PowerShell to help developers carry out common tasks on the Azure Portal. These are split out into the standard Azure cmdlets for the “classic” experience and a set of AzureRM cmdlets for the new Resource Management approach. Although the “classic” Azure resource cmdlets are still available and supported, they very much operate in isolation - that is, if you have a requirement to interchangeably create “classic” and Resource Manager resources as part of the same script file, then you are going to encounter some major difficulties and errors. One example of this is that the ability to switch subscriptions that you have access, but not ownership, to becomes nigh on impossible to achieve. For this reason, I would recommend utilising AzureRM cmdlets solely if you ever have a requirement to create classic resources to maintain an existing deployment. To help accommodate this scenario, the New-AzureRmResource cmdlet really becomes your best friend. In a nutshell, it lets you create any Azure Resource of your choosing when executed. The catch around using it is that the exact syntax to utilise as part of the -ResourceType parameter can take some time to discover, particularly in the case of working with “classic” resources. What follows are some code snippets that, hopefully, provide you with a working set of cmdlets to create the “classic” resources highlighted in the screenshot above.

Before you begin…

To use any of the cmdlets that follow, make sure you have connected to Azure, selected your target subscription and have a Resource Group created to store your resources using the cmdlets below. You can obtain your Subscription ID by navigating to its properties within the Azure portal:

#Replace the parameter values below to suit your requirements

$subscriptionID = 36ef0d35-2775-40f7-b3a1-970a4c23eca2
$rgName = 'MyResourceGroup'
$location = 'UK South'

Set-ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted
Login-AzureRmAccount
Set-AzureRmContext -SubscriptionId $subscriptionID
#Create Resource Group
New-AzureRMResourceGroup -Name $rgName -Location $location

With this done, you should hopefully encounter no problems executing the cmdlets that follow.

Cloud Services (classic)

#Create an empty Cloud Service (classic) resource in MyResourceGroup in the UK South region

New-AzureRmResource -ResourceName 'MyClassicCloudService' -ResourceGroupName $rgName `
                    -ResourceType 'Microsoft.ClassicCompute/domainNames' -Location $location -Force

Disks (classic)

#Create a Disk (classic) resource using a Linux operating system in MyResourceGroup in the UK South region.
#Needs a valid VHD in a compatible storage account to work correctly

New-AzureRmResource -ResourceName 'MyClassicDisk' -ResourceGroupName $rgName -ResourceType 'Microsoft.ClassicStorage/storageaccounts/disks' ` 
                    -Location $location `
                    -PropertyObject @{'DiskName'='MyClassicDisk' 
                    'Label'='My Classic Disk' 
                    'VhdUri'='https://mystorageaccount.blob.core.windows.net/mycontainer/myvhd.vhd'
                    'OperatingSystem' = 'Linux'
                    } -Force

Network Security groups (classic)

#Create a Network Security Group (classic) resource in MyResourceGroup in the UK South region.

New-AzureRmResource -ResourceName 'MyNSG' -ResourceGroupName $rgName -ResourceType 'Microsoft.ClassicNetwork/networkSecurityGroups' `
                    -Location $location -Force

Reserved IP Addresses (classic)

#Create a Reserved IP (classic) resource in MyResourceGroup in the UK South region.

New-AzureRmResource -ResourceName 'MyReservedIP' -ResourceGroupName $rgName -ResourceType 'Microsoft.ClassicNetwork/reservedIps' `
                    -Location $location -Force

Storage Accounts (classic)

#Create a Storage Account (classic) resource in MyResourceGroup in the UK South region.
#Storage account with use Standard Locally Redundant Storage

New-AzureRmResource -ResourceName 'MyStorageAccount' -ResourceGroupName $rgName -ResourceType 'Microsoft.ClassicStorage/StorageAccounts' ` 
                    -Location $location -PropertyObject @{'AccountType' = 'Standard-LRS'} -Force

Virtual Networks (classic)

#Create a Virtual Network (classic) resource in MyResourceGroup in the UK South Region

New-AzureRmResource -ResourceName 'MyVNET' -ResourceGroupName $rgName -ResourceType 'Microsoft.ClassicNetwork/virtualNetworks' `
                    -Location $location
                    -PropertyObject @{'AddressSpace' = @{'AddressPrefixes' = '10.0.0.0/16'}
                                      'Subnets' = @{'name' = 'MySubnet'
                                                    'AddressPrefix' = '10.0.0.0/24'
                                                    }
                                     }

VM Images (classic)

#Create a VM image (classic) resource in MyResourceGroup in the UK South region.
#Needs a valid VHD in a compatible storage account to work correctly

New-AzureRmResource -ResourceName 'MyVMImage' -ResourceGroupName $rgName -ResourceType 'Microsoft.ClassicStorage/storageAccounts/vmImages' `
                    -Location $location `
                    -PropertyObject @{'Label' = 'MyVMImage Label'
                    'Description' = 'MyVMImage Description'
                    'OperatingSystemDisk' = @{'OsState' = 'Specialized'
                                              'Caching' = 'ReadOnly'
                                              'OperatingSytem' = 'Windows'
                                              'VhdUri' = 'https://mystorageaccount.blob.core.windows.net/mycontainer/myvhd.vhd'}
                    }

Conclusions or Wot I Think

The requirement to work with the cmdlets shown in this post should only really be a concern for those who are maintaining “classic” resources as part of an ongoing deployment. It is therefore important to emphasise not to use these cmdlets to create resources for new projects. Alongside the additional complexity involved in constructing the New-AzureRmResource cmdlet, there is an abundance of new, updated AzureRM cmdlets at your disposal that enables you to more intuitively create the correct types of resources. The key benefit that these examples provide is the ability to use a single Azure PowerShell module for the management of your entire Azure estate, as opposed to having to switch back and forth between different modules. It is perhaps a testament to how flexible Azure is that cmdlets like the New-AzureRmResource exist in the first place, ultimately enabling anybody to fine-tune deployment and maintenance scripts to suit any conceivable situation.