Powershell Archives

Serverless application with PowerShell: Azure Functions

03/08/2018
by Martin Ehrnst

In part two we will integrate Azure Functions using Powershell triggered by Event Grid to complete the circle in our application infrastructure. If you havent read the previous parts in this blog series, i recommend you start with the introducution.

Azure Functions, what?

Azure’s serverless flagship probably don’t need any introduction at this stage, but in short. Azure Functions allows you to run code or scripts on demand triggered via various sources. Timer triggers, event, webhooks, http post, gets etc. The most common way to run your stuff is by consumption where your code run on spare compute in azure at a very low-cost. If you demand more power, you can also opt in for the app service plan.

Read more about functions and how to get started here.

FYI; the same type of service from AWS is called Lambda and Google offers similar with Cloud Functions

Powershell support

Powershell support in Azure Functions is still in preview, but I have used it many times, without issues. It is slower that all the other languages supported, but that doesent matter in this case. But be aware that azure functions Powershell run in v4. If you want to run C# or Java feel free to do so.

Let’s start by adding a new function app. Things to notice is that the name of your function app, is also the DNS name. App insights is on by default, and I have no idea why you would want to chose OS type. This wasn’t here before…

without wasting too much of your time reading a lot of fill text, lets just create a new function. Remember to enable ‘experimental language support’ this will magically allow Powershell support (among others). Chose the HTTP trigger Powershell.

I am naming my first function “incoming-pizza-order” which we will add the code to and connect to Event Grid.

After creation you will have a function that supports GET and POST request with your name as the input. A “hello world” type of example. Let’s see if we can trigger this from Event Grid. As we did in the previous post. Create a new Event Grid subscription.

Failure, right? Let’s take a look.

Validating event grid subscriptions

Azure event grid accepts all incoming events and will pass them on to any subscribers. To add a layer of security you will have to validate the subscription upon creation. So all subscribers, weather it’s your own incoming webhook solution on premises or in a another cloud, will have to sort of handshake before it creates the subscription. As you see, the error message in Azure isn’t very good, and I searched quite a long time before I reached out to Ling Toh via Twitter. Luckily she pointed me in the right direction.

Upon creation event grid sends a validation request to the subscriber, which looks something like this:

[{ "id": "2d1781af-3a4c-4d7c-bd0c-e34b19da4e66", "topic": "/subscriptions/xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx", "subject": "", "data": { "validationCode": "512d38b6-c7b8-40c8-89fe-f46f9e9622b6", "validationUrl": "https://rp-eastus2.eventgrid.azure.net:553/eventsubscriptions/estest/validate?id=B2E34264-7D71-453A-B5FB-B62D0FDC85EE&t=2018-04-26T20:30:54.4538837Z&apiVersion=2018-05-01-preview&token=1BNqCxBBSSE9OnNSfZM4%2b5H9zDegKMY6uJ%2fO2DFRkwQ%3d" }, "eventType": "Microsoft.EventGrid.SubscriptionValidationEvent", "eventTime": "2018-01-25T22:12:19.4556811Z", "metadataVersion": "1", "dataVersion": "1" }]

We will have to return a successful HTTP response (HTTP 200 OK) with the validation code under the property, “validationResponse”

{ "validationResponse": "512d38b6-c7b8-40c8-89fe-f46f9e9622b6" }

All this is described in Microsofts documentation, but how do we do this in a Powershell function? Here’s my modified version of the “hello world/name” example. As you see it grabs the post requests and if it is a validation event from Event Grid it will return an http 200 and the validation response. Copy the entire script in to your function and re-create the subscription in event grid.

Hopefully the subscription registered successfully. Time to play!

Grab the code example from part 1 and fire off an event, in the matter of seconds your function will fire. You can confirm that it’s working by looking at the log and output.

How cool isn’t this? I love that we can use our Ops skills and create true serverless, modern application infrastructure.

What’s next for our Pizza order example?

In my next post, I will share a few more code examples with multiple Azure Functions, sending events through event grid, from the introduction you know that these are the steps:

Customer creates/orders a pizza online
Send orderdata to event grid
Azure function subscribe to the “new order” event
Create a new event when pizza is in oven
Post new event when pizza is cooked and ready for delivery
Create a new event when pizza is sent to customer.

PS: I would like to create a simple GUI at some point, what tools should I use? I’m thinking either Powershell Universal Dashboard by Adam Driscoll or PowerApps. If you have other suggestions, let me know.

Automation

Serverless application with PowerShell: Azure Event Grid

30/05/201829/05/2018
by Martin Ehrnst

This is part one of my blog series describing how you can create a serverless application infrastructure using PowerShell. The scope and history behind, covered in the introduction post. If you haven’t read that I recommend doing so.

Azure Event Grid

In my serverless infrastructure design, I have chosen to use Azure Event Grid as a hub for the other components in play. The other components will write and subscribe to events/messages in Event Grid and perform their given task as ‘their’ event arrives. Event grid fit’s the concept perfectly as you act on state changes. You can publish as many events you like, but you don’t need to subscribe to every one. A lot of Azures PaaS offerings are already fully integrated which makes it easy to get started.

Other event based offerings in Azure are Service Bus and Event Hub. You can read a little on the differences here

Set up Event Grid custom topic

I am sure you are able to create resources in Azure so here’s a quick one. Feel free to use what ever you want for deployment, but for the purpose of screenshots, I’m using the portal. Just remember that the name you chose will be the url of your endpoint as well.

After the custom topic is successfully deployed, you are given the option to subscribe to events. Before doing that we are taking a break. Besides a graph showing incoming events you have no good way to see your events as they arrive. This makes it way more difficult to debug why stuff isn’t working. While writing this post I researched for a good way to solve this and stumbled across this blog post by David Barkol. He created a web app that lets you view events as they arrive. You can deploy it directly from GitHub using ARM. Do this while your coffee is brewing. And come back here in 10 minutes 🙂

Subscribe to Event Grid topic

Welcome back… If you have deployed the web app you can follow and create a subscription subscribing to all events. In a production scenario, it’s likely to have scoped your subscribers, but in order for Event grid viewer to function i’ll subscribe to everything.

Once deployed your overview page will look something like this. Showing all subscriptions within your topic and their corresponding metrics. Now lets try to send a custom event using powershell.

Send event to event grid using PowerShell

Basically, event grid accepts post request to an API endpoint, which is the name of your topic plus a suffix and the API version. your full URI looks something like this; https://adatumblogdemo.northeurope-1.eventgrid.azure.net/api/events?api-version=2018-01-01

To authenticate we will pass an ‘aeg-sas-key’ within our request header. You will find the keys for authentication in the keys pane. Further event grid events has a schema you willl need to follow, meaning that all post requests will need to have some properties defined and your custom event data will be in a data property. The basics of it all looks like this

[ { "topic": string, "subject": string, "id": string, "eventType": string, "eventTime": string, "data":{ "custom": "data" }, "dataVersion": string, "metadataVersion": string } ]

More details on the schema can be found on Msft Docs

If we combine everything we know this far, we can use the script below to post messages to event grid. Please add your own url and access key. Everything else should work.

Assuming no error messages, jump in to your event grid viewer to view the raw content like this;

A corresponding graph in the Azure portal could look something like this. Here you will see incoming events and how many matches your subscriptions in the same graph. You can also see individual metrics per subscription.

Summary

In this part of my blog series on how to create a serverless application infrastructure using PowerShell. We have walked through how to set up a custom Event Grid topic and how to post messages or event to it using standard PowerShell commandlets. We also deployed a custom web application capable of reading our incoming events in real time.

In the next part: For part two we are going to create an Azure Function running PowertShell that subscribes and send Event Grid messages. This is key to build up our infrastructure wich consists of multiple Azure Functions in order to work.

Azure

Azure Cloud Shell

14/12/201714/12/2017
by Martin Ehrnst

Azure Cloud Shell have been available through the Azure Portal for some time now. Just recently Microsoft released cloud shell as a “stand-alone” web page, shell.azure.com both Bash and Powershell (preview) are available.

That means you can access a Powershell (or bash) console from any browser at any time and from what I can see, both Azure RM and Azure AD modules are available. To get started, visit shell.azure.com and sign in.

First time setup

When you sign in using Cloud Shell for the first time you will have to create a storage account. I am not certain, but I assume the storage account is used for Powershell modules etc.

Select your subscription and continue.

First initialization can take some time, but when storage is created and Azure have done a few compute transactions, things should look something like this. In the below image I have started a Powershell session. From here on you can start exploring. Try to run help, Get-CloudDrive etc to get a little more information.

Cloud Drive

Cloud drive is the storage account for Azure Cloud Shell. I was a little interested in how it works and what possibilities it have. After a little investigation it turns out Cloud Drive is mounted in to cloud shell by default, mapped to letter Y: (see picture). Not sure how supported this is, but you can easially create folders, script etc inside your Cloud Drive which will be available on any device you use

Cmdlet examples

Azure Cloud Shell comes with all built-in Powershell modules and the whole AzureRM module loaded by default. And let’s not forget you also have text editors, source control and Pester available. To see a complete list of whats included in Cloud Shell, visit https://docs.microsoft.com/nb-no/azure/cloud-shell/features-powershell#tools

Apart from AzureRM (run Get-AzureRMCommand) you have Azure AD (AAD) available. For example Get-AzureAdUser.

I really like this new world, hopefully even better with Azure Cloud Shell.

Have fun!

Other resources

PS: If you run $PSVersiontable you will see that Azure Cloud Shell actually runs on the native powershell (Deskop), version 5.1 and not version 6 which is Powershell Core…

Automation

Activate Webasto diesel heater using OMS and Azure functions

03/10/2017
by Martin Ehrnst

Looking at the above picture snow and winter is pretty awesome, but when you have to fire up your car outside your cabin in -15c (5f) you wish for summer. Not only is it extremely hard for your engine, but it’s also ridiculously cold to get inside the car! That’s why many cars in Norway are equipped with preheaters. A unit you can activate before starting or entering the car, heating up the engine (and in many cases the interior as well).
Just to put some numbers down, average temperature in Oslo January 2017 was -4.3, and coldest -12.6.

My child carrier, a Range Rover Sport, (one of Britains fines engineering that never fails) is equipped with a Webasto pre heater and controlled remotely by SMS command or an app. Communication is using WBUS, Webasto’s own language.

My goal in this post is to use data from the OMS Weather Data solution and Azure functions to automatically start my Webasto heater based on the observed temperature. I have to say, using the app directly way easier, but this is a very good opportunity to explore and play with cars, azure and automation.

Starting the heater

Many of these heaters and apps only communicate using SMS commands, but my heater controller can use internet connection as well, meaning there is an API of some sort it’s communicating with.

Using fiddler I found out how the app was communicating, replicating it using Powershell I ended up with this as a simple function to send commands to my heater. Typical commands are “cmd_heater_status” which asks for current status, and “cmd_time1:30,start” that starts the heater for 30 minutes.

To be honest, I wasn’t very pleased with the security here, but that’s something I will notify the company who make these controllers about.

Below is a typical output after requesting heater status.

heater : 1 gsm : 7 voltage : 12.0 h_temp : 25 flame : 0 date : 2017-10-1 19:13:9 valid : 1 status_date : 01/10 status_fdate : 01.10.2017 status_time : 21:13:09

Creating the Azure Function

After we have the basic functionality in place, we can add some logic to our script and create an Azure Function out of it. I have created a basic Powershell function below that accepts two input parameters. TempLow the temperature you have to be below to fire the heater, and heatingMinutes which is the number of minutes the heater will run.

The rest of the script is using our function above to request statuses and act upon our input and the heater response. I had to add sleep time within the script so that the Webasto controller had time process my commands.
Parameters like email-address and heaterId are defined as function environment variables

OMS / Log Analytics setup – query and alert.

Using data from the weather solution I created together with Cameron Fuller i created the following query to alert when observed temperature in Oslo is below a certain degree. This search is based on the new query language, Kusto. I reccommend everyone (including my self) to take a look at this Kusto cheet sheet.
YRno_CL | where LocationName_s == "Oslo" and TimeGenerated > ago(2h) | summarize AggregatedValue = avg(ObservedTemp_d) by bin(TimeGenerated, 15m), LocationName_s

Create an metric based alert based on the above query.

To kick off our Azure Function we set the alert to send a webhook with a custom json payload looking like this: (yes testing values)
{ "tempLow": "59", "heatingMinutes": "40" }

The test says webhook is sent successfully, and our function log confirms 🙂

Calm down John Snow, let winter come.

Azure

Resource health through Azure Rest API

18/09/201714/11/2017
by Martin Ehrnst

As a part of a large monitoring project involving on prem, Azure and Office 365 I have started to explore the different methods on how to acquire all relevent data. Previously, I have written a post on how you authenticate against Microsoft’s partner center API which is a part of the same feasibility project.
Later down the road i will try to write a larger blog series on how we can monitor Microsoft Cloud and on-Prem resources. Hopefully it will be joyful…

This blog post will describe how you can use Powershell to authenticate and get availability status from all resource groups and their resources. If you’re not that interested in monitoring data, use this post as a guide on how to get started with the API and the rest is documented on the Azure API documentation pages.

High level overview:

Set up an Azure Active Directory Application to authenticate (not covered)
Build an authentication header with a token from Azure AD
Get all resource groups within a subscription
Get the availability of all resources within a resource group

Get Azure AD application token

After setting up/registering the application in Azure AD you will have to use the application ID and secret in order to generate an authentication token to use against Azure management Rest API’s. I have created a basic Powershell function you can use, including an example authentication header.

Get all resource groups and resources

Next we will grab all resource groups within a subscription, before looping through each resource group to get the individual resources.

Now that we have all resource group and all resources within we can use this to further get the resource health and availability. To be honest we don’t need to get RG before checking the resources it self, but as a starting point i find it very useful to have the resource groups and their resources available within my scripts.

Get the resource availability status

Now we have authenticated, grabbed all resource groups and their resources and it’s time to find our resource health. There are multiple ways on how to get this data, and we have to consider the methods we use. One limitation i hit pretty fast working with this is the number of subscription resource get requests, specified in the response header “x-ms-ratelimit-remaining-subscription-resource-requests: ” All limitations documentet, here

When you hit this limit every substantial requests is dropped. I have to rethink my whole monitoring scenario due to these limitations.

Get Resource health based on resource group

This let’s us get health state on all resources scoped to a resource group. If we reuse the data from previously (we have all resource groups within our subscription) we will get all resource group health this way.

Other examples are to get availability by Resource and the entire subscription

Serverless application with PowerShell: Azure Functions

Azure Functions, what?

Powershell support

Validating event grid subscriptions

What’s next for our Pizza order example?

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Serverless application with PowerShell: Azure Event Grid

Azure Event Grid

Set up Event Grid custom topic

Subscribe to Event Grid topic

Send event to event grid using PowerShell

Summary

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Azure Cloud Shell

First time setup

Cloud Drive

Cmdlet examples

Other resources

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Activate Webasto diesel heater using OMS and Azure functions

Starting the heater

Creating the Azure Function

OMS / Log Analytics setup – query and alert.

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Resource health through Azure Rest API

Get Azure AD application token

Get all resource groups and resources

Get the resource availability status

Get Resource health based on resource group

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