Beautiful structure of components in the Microsoft Azure cloud

Microsoft Azure is one of the largest cloud platforms in the world. Even despite my lack of sympathy for the corporation that made it, I have to admit that the platform has a number of amenities compared to its competitors. But there is no barrel of honey without a tar spoon, and this spoon in Microsoft Azure are the names of the system components. If in AWS to rename a component is a matter of two clicks, then in Azure the names are tightly attached to the components and it is sometimes impossible to change them without dancing with a tambourine. Therefore, it is very important to create the right structure when working with Azure.



So let's try to create a virtual machine in Microsoft Azure with the name server-01 and default settings. The following picture clearly shows the mess that we have in the end.



If everything suits you here, then you can not read further. Well, if you, like me, like the total order in the administered economy, I would venture to suggest a scheme for beautifully naming the components of Microsoft Azure, which I myself have been using for the past few years.

This scheme allows you to bring the entire system to the following unified form:
{Component group} __ {Element}
{Component} - {Number} __ {Element} - {number}

So, let's start ...

Add a resource group

Resource groups >> +Add
    Resource groupname: servers

Create a virtual network and subnet

By default, Microsoft Azure extends the subnet to the entire virtual network. This is not very convenient, since, if necessary, it will be very difficult to add new subnets (for example, a VPN subnet). Therefore, I usually give up the last two octets (mask 16) for the virtual network, and for the subnet - one last octet (mask 24).

Virtual networks >> +Add
    Name: servers__network
    Address space: 10.0.0.0/16
    Subnet:
        Name: default
        Address range: 10.0.0.0/24
Network interfaces: +Add
    Name: server-01__ip-private-01Virtual network: servers__network
    Subnet: defaultPrivate IP address: Static/10.0.0.101

The first few subnet addresses (10.0.0.01 ... 03) Azure uses to fit your needs, so I moved the working addresses to a range above 100. Thus, the server number will correspond to the last digit of the IP address: server-01 = 10.0.0.101, server-02 = 10.0.0.102, server-43 = 10.0.0.143, etc.

External address and security group

If it is planned that the virtual machine will look outside, then create a public address and security group.

Public IP addresses: +Add
    Name: server-01__ip-public-01
    IP address assignment: StaticPublic IP addresses >> выбираем server-01__ip-public-01 >> Associate:
    Resource type >> Network interface: server-01__ip-private-01

In Azure, you can create a security group for both a single machine and the subnet as a whole. Depending on the variant, the names will differ.

Network securitygroups >> +Add

Option security group for a single host:

Name: server-01__security-group
    Network interfaces >> +Associate: server-01__ip-private-01

Subnet Security Group:

Name: servers__network-security-group
    Subnets >> +Associate:
        Virtual network: servers__network
        Subnet: default

Disk

Unfortunately, Azure does not allow you to create disks with arbitrary names, so you need to do a workaround through the creation of a dummy virtual machine, and then use its disk as a disc to create a working machine.

Create a dummy virtual machine

Virtual machines >> +Add
    Basics:
        Name: server-01-raw
        VM disk type: Premium SSD
        Username: your-name
        SSH public key: your-public-key
    Settings:
        Availability set: None
        Network: servers__network
        Subnet: defaultPublic IP address: None
        Select public inbound ports: No public inbound ports
        Monitoring: Disabled

After creating a dummy machine, you can delete all components (including the machine itself) that are marked with the raw suffix except for the disk.

We remove snapshot disk

Disks >> выбираем disk server-01-raw_OsDisk_... >> +Create snapshot
    Name: server-01-raw-snapshot

On the basis of snapshot create a new working disk:

Disks >> +AddName: server-01__disk-01
    Source type: Snapshot
    Source snapshot: server-01-raw-snapshot

Expand the working machine based on the new disk

Disks >> выбираем server-01__disk-01 >> + Create VM
    Basics:
        Name: server-01
    Settings:
        Availability set: None
        Network: servers__network
        Subnet: defaultPublic IP address: None
        Selectpublic inbound ports: No public inbound ports
        Monitoring: Disabled

Network Interfaces

Another Microsoft omission is that when creating a virtual machine from a disk in the GUI, it is not possible to attach a previously created network interface to it. Therefore, we stop the car, delete the network interface and attach the one we created above to it.

Virtual machines >> выбрать VM server-01 >> Stop
Virtual machines >> выбрать VM server-01 >> Networking:
    Attach network interface >> server-01__ip-private-01
    Detach network interface >> server-01982

Removal of garbage

The final touch is the removal of garbage that has remained from the manipulations we have made.

Delete:

server-01982 network interface,
server-01-nsg security group,
disk from a dummy machine: server-01-raw_OsDisk ...
snapshot server-01-raw-snapshot

This is what happened:

CLI

You, probably, already noticed that to bring beauty in Azure is quite troublesome. But everything is greatly simplified if you use the command line (CLI). Microsoft Azure provides CLI for both its native PowerShell and Linux console. The last option will be described below.

Login:

az login -u AzureUserName

Get a list of available locations

az account list-locations

Get the list of virtual machine sizes:

az vm list-sizes --location locationName

We set the list of network and virtual machine parameters (all subsequent commands will transmit this data via variables):

location="westindia"
resource_group="servers"
virt_network="servers__network"
virt_network_range="10.0.0.0/16"
subnet="default"
subnet_range="10.0.0.0/24"
user="username"
ssh_key="ssh-public-key"
name="server-01"
image="UbuntuLTS"
ip="10.0.0.101"
interface_suffix="__ip-private-01"
disk_suffix="__disk-01"
size="Standard_B1s"### SSD = "Premium_LRS"; HDD = "Standard_LRS"
storage_type="Premium_LRS"

Create a resource group:

az group create --location ${location} --name ${resource_group}

Create a virtual network and subnet:

az network vnet create --location ${location} --resource-group ${resource_group} --name ${virt_network} --address-prefixes ${virt_network_range}

az network vnet subnet create --resource-group ${resource_group} --vnet-name ${virt_network} --name ${subnet} --address-prefix ${subnet_range}

Create a network interface:

az network nic create --resource-group ${resource_group} --location ${location} --name ${name}${interface_suffix} --subnet ${subnet} --vnet-name ${virt_network} --private-ip-address ${ip}

Create a dummy virtual machine:

az vm create --name ${name} --admin-username ${user} --ssh-key-value "${ssh_key}" --resource-group ${resource_group} --location ${location} --image ${image} --size ${size} --nics ${name}${interface_suffix} --storage-sku ${storage_type}

Normalize the disk:

az vm stop --name ${name} --resource-group ${resource_group}
disk_old=$(az vm get-instance-view --name ${name} --resource-group ${resource_group} | grep -o "${name}_OsDisk[0-9a-z\_]\{1,\}" | head -1)
az disk create --location ${location} --resource-group ${resource_group} --name ${name}${disk_suffix} --source${disk_old} --sku ${storage_type}

Remove the dummy machine and deploy the worker:

az vm delete --name ${name} --resource-group ${resource_group} --yes
az vm create --name ${name} --resource-group ${resource_group} --location ${location} --size ${size} --nics ${name}${interface_suffix} --attach-os-disk ${name}${disk_suffix} --os-type Linux ${availability_set_as_option}

Remove the dummy drive:

az disk delete --resource-group ${resource_group} --name ${disk_old} --yes

Automation

To automate the process of deploying virtual machines in the Microsoft Azure cloud, I put all the above commands into one azure-create-vm.sh bash script, which can be taken from Github . Open the script in any text editor, drive in your data and you can deploy virtual machines with beautiful names by pressing a few keys.