Azure Start VM

Objective

The goal of the tutorial is to start the Azure Virtual Machine(s) using FlexDeploy Azure plugin operation. This automation includes:

• Start the Azure Virtual Machine using One or more Virtual Machine Id(s) / Virtual Machine Name and Resource group Name.

We will walk through each of the FlexDeploy features that needs to be created/configured to accomplish this goal and start the Virtual Machine in a very short amount of time.

Checklist

Configure cloud account

First, an Azure account needs to be configured under Integrations. FlexDeploy will connect to the right Azure Subscription with provided details and starts the Virtual Machine(s).

1. Select Integrations from the FlexDeploy Menu and navigate to the Cloud tab from the left-hand pane.

2. Create a new Cloud account with the “+ Create” button.

3. Provide the Cloud Account name.

4. Also provide the Cloud Account code.

5. Select “Azure” as Cloud Provider from drop down as shown below.

Update Client ID, Client Key, Tenant Id, and Subscription Id against the Cloud Account. The Client ID must have relevant access to the Virtual Machine to start the VM.

Integration Instance Properties:

1. Client Key is a password field and hence needs to be kept hidden. To update the same, click on the pencil icon as shown below.

2. Update the Client Key value under Secret Text. This is to make sure no one else can view/retrieve the password.

3. Save the credential.

1. Do a Test Connection. The green color ticket mark will show that the connection is successful.

2. After entering the credential, click on Save on the cloud instance.

Utility Workflow

Next, we shall create one Utility workflow as shown below. The Workflow Type field defines the type of workflow.

Utility Workflow

1. Navigate to the Workflows tab

2. Select the “+” button from the left-hand pane to create a new workflow with type as Utility.

The Workflow Group and Subgroup define the folder hierarchy. Once the workflow is created, it should look like the below. No constraint on workflow or folder naming convention.

The steps of the workflow execution can be configured through the Definition section.

1. Navigate to Plugin Operations section and search for Azure plugin startVM operation.

2. Drag the operation under workflow execution step as shown below.

Below given is a sample utility workflow to start the Virtual Machine.

The StartVM operation returns three output variables. To capture them and use them for further processing/evaluation, one can create three variables and map them against the output parameters. Return As Output drop down option should be set as Yes.

1. First, navigate to the Workflow Definition tab and click on the Variables button.

2. Next use Create option to add three output variables. Return As Output is marked as true so that the workflow will return the same variables as Output. These variables can then further be used for other purposes.

Map the variables against the output of the StartVM operation to capture the responses.

Save & Activate the workflow.

You can provide the VM Name & Resource Group or VM Resource Id(s) in the Project properties. Azure Plugin will consider the values and start the servers.

However, one can also provide the VM Resource Id/ VM name directly to Plugin input as well as shown below.

Workflow Inputs

Plugin Outputs

Topology

For detailed steps on how to configure the topology and map the workflows manually, please refer to Configure the Topology for Azure

Target Properties

Selecting the DEV environment mapped to the Target Group will display the configurable properties/Endpoint and allows to the configure the properties.

Provide the value for AzureCloudAccount, and AzureCLIPath(optional if set in classPath), Number of Iterations (optional, default value is 6), and Interval Duration (optional default value is 30sec) and map the localhost as Endpoint as shown below.

Target Properties Info

Create the Azure Start VM Project using Blank Project

For details steps on how to configure the project and execution, please refer to Create the Azure Start/Stop/Restart VM Project

Once the VM is started using Azure CLI by the plugin operation, the plugin itself will check for startup status at periodic interval as mentioned above. Once the VM is up & running the plugin operation will successfully conclude.

Reports

With the successful execution of the Utility workflow, a text (.txt) file is created, stored in the reports tab. Every execution will generate a new report with execution Id appended to the text file in the Reports tab.

Click on the text file generated to see the details. This file captures the details of each instance i.e., VM Resource Id, Provision State, and Power State. In the workflow, there were two Azure VM Resource Id’s are provided as input. Hence, the report contains the details of both the Azure VM's. Also, user can download the report file generated.

Congratulations! You have successfully completed the Azure Start Virtual Machine tutorial.

Now that you have configured FlexDeploy for one Azure VM operation, it is extremely easy to replicate the same for other Azure VM operations. Simply use the Copy Project feature and a new project will be created with all of the configuration completed already. You just need to make the necessary configuration changes.