Since Update Rollup 6 of Virtual Machine Manager 2012 R2, it is possible to manage Azure VM from the VMM console. You can do simple actions as stop or start the machine, establish an RDP connection. In this topic I’ll describe how to add the Azure Subscription to manage Azure VM from Virtual Machine Manager 2012R2.
Requirements
To follow this topic you need:
- A working Virtual Machine Manager with at least Update Rollup 6;
- An Azure Subscription.
Moreover Azure VM created from the Azure Resource Manager are currently not manageable from VMM.
Create and import in Azure a management certificate
Create from an enterprise PKI
First, you need to create a management certificate. You can use your enterprise Public Key Infrastructure to make a certificate. This certificate must be in the personal user store as below.
Next, export this certificate as CER.
Create from MakeCert
The other method consists of using MakeCert from visual studio to create a self-signed certificate (for further information read this topic):
makecert -sky exchange -r -n "CN=<CertificateName>" -pe -a sha1 -len 2048 -ss My "<CertificateName>.cer"
Once the certificate is generated, you can find it in your personal certificate store.
Import the management certificate in Azure
Now that your CER file is generated, you can navigate to the Azure Portal and select Settings. Click on Management certificates and choose Upload a Management Certificate.
Next, select your CER file and click on OK.
After a couple of minutes, you should see the certificate as below.
Add the Azure Subscription to Virtual Machine Manager
First you need your Subscription ID. You can use the Add-AzureAccount cmdlet as below.
Next, open your Virtual Machine Manager console and select Add Subscription as below:
Then specify a Display Name and your Subscription ID. To finish, select the certificate (you can compare the thumbprint with the CER previously imported in Azure).
After the initial synchronization (it can take few minutes), you should see your Azure VM as below.
It’s a great feature but …
Thanks to this feature you can see and manage the power of your VM. You can also connect to your Azure VM by using RDP from VMM console.
But I think this feature is not finished. For example only Azure VM created from the Azure Portal are visible from VMM console. The Azure VM created from Azure Resource Manager are not manageable from VMM. For example, below I have some resources created from an Azure Resource Manager Template (JSON file):
The Azure VM circled in red are VM created from Azure Resource Manager. If you compare the two last screenshots, you can see that VM circled in red are not manageable from VMM.
Next I think that not enough actions are possible from VMM to manage Azure VM. For example I would like to manage the size of the VM, the availability set or the VM creation. But it is not yet possibleJ.
However the Azure VM management from VMM has been released in the last Update Rollup (UR6). I trust the team responsible for VMM to improve this feature J.
