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I have introduced several articles about the application of Azure Automation before, and today I will introduce another usage of automation. The previous introduction of Azure Automation is all about the most basic and core application of automation, that is, Automation Runbook. Through Runbook, we can perform some automated tasks in accordance with our design, achieve many powerful functions in Azure, and even combine Flow, PowerApps,Logic Apps and other applications to give full play to the functions of Azure.

In addition, Automation can also be used in other ways. For example, configuration management in Automation is a good example. At present, configuration management mainly contains three chunks.

1. Inventory

2. Change tracking

3. State configuration (DSC)

This time, I will take the time to introduce the first two uses, first of all, inventory. We all know that inventory actually refers to the asset management of computers. IT administrators must want to be able to monitor and know which Patch is played and what software is installed in each VM. In fact, this information can be obtained through scripts, but for Windows Server, without adding domains, if you want to execute scripts remotely Security is an aspect that needs to be considered, on the other hand, this scheme is not flexible and bulky, and it takes a lot of energy to maintain such an environment. In fact, it provides a good first-party solution in automation, that is, inventory in configuration management.

Inventory can collect not only the asset information of the VM in Azure, but also the information of the server in the on premise environment, which is quite powerful. After the information collection is completed, it is basically in this form, and all kinds of information will be automatically classified and can be easily queried.

So, how does inventory charge?

The charging method of Configuration management actually consists of two parts.

1. Based on the number of nodes registered with this service

2. Charging for log data stored in Azure Log Analytics service

The number of nodes represents the server registered to configuration management, which can be Azure VM, on premise host/vm, or even VM of other public clouds. Of course, Azure VM charges are much cheaper than other heterogeneous platforms.

Not to mention the cost of log data stored in Azure Log Analytics, it is the cost of storing information.

Let's take a look at how to use inventory. First of all, we need to find automation account. We will find that in addition to the runbook in the process automation we used before, there is also a configuration management. Here we can find inventory, because inventory actually collects and analyzes information through log Analytics, so we need to create a log Analytics workspace first. The creation process is also very simple. In the wizard, we directly select create new workspace. Then enable is ready.

You can see that the deployment has started to submit after enable

After waiting for a few minutes, the deployment is over. During the deployment, a Log Analytics Workspace is actually created and automation account and workspace link are combined.

Click inventory again when you are done, and you can already see that the interface has become different.

Let's see how to add the node of Azure to inventory. If you want to add Azure VM to inventory, you first need to enable inventory in VM. This is very simple. You only need to find inventory in VM. If the location where the VM is located already has automation account and log analytics workspace, you can enable it directly.

After Enable, we try to install some software in VM, such as chrome. After waiting for a period of time, we can see that we have seen the results in inventory.

Let's see if you register the node of non-azure with workspace

First find the previously created workspace in Log Analytics workspaces, and select advanced settings

Record workspace id and primary key, and then click to download windows agent

Start the installation after the download is complete

Choose to connect the agent to Azure log analysis

Enter the workspace id and primary key from the previous copy, and then start the installation

Installation completed

Agent can also be seen in the control panel after installation

In addition, note that the following registry keys and values need to be created

Create the following DWORD values under HKLM\ System\ System\ CurrentControlSet\ Control\ SecurityProviders\ SCHANNEL\ Protocols\ TLS 1.2\ Client:

Enabled [value = 1]

DisabledByDefault [value = 0]

Locate the following registry subkey HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ SOFTWARE\ WOW6432Node\ Microsoft\. Net Framework\ v4.0.30319, and create a DWORD value SchUseStrongCrypto with a value of 1 under this subkey.

Locate the following registry subkey: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ SOFTWARE\ Microsoft\ .NET Framework\ v4.0.30319. Create a DWORD value SchUseStrongCrypto with a value of 1 under this subkey

Then restart the server.

After that, you will see a server with inventory not enabled in inventory. Just click on it.

After waiting for a while, you can see that this non-azure server appears in inventory.

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