Create a Virtual Machine with PowerShell

Now, when you feel the power of PowerShell, you know that you can do basically anything with it in Azure, even create a VM! Having such a script would be very helpful because you are expecting your application to become even more popular, which means that you will need to deploy a lot of new VMs.

In this task, you will implement a PowerShell script, which deploys an Azure Virtual Machine to your subscription.

Prerequisites

Before completing any task in the module, make sure that you followed all the steps described in the Environment Setup topic, in particular:

1. Ensure you have an Azure account and subscription.

2. Create a resource group called "mate-resources" in the Azure subscription.

3. In the "mate-resources" resource group, create a storage account (any name) and a task-artifacts container.

4. Install PowerShell 7 on your computer. All tasks in this module use PowerShell 7. To run it in the terminal, execute the following command:

   pwsh
   

5. Install Azure module for PowerShell 7:

   Install-Module -Name Az -Repository PSGallery -Force
   

If you are a Windows user, before running this command, please also run the following: Set-ExecutionPolicy -ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned -Scope CurrentUser

6. Log in to your Azure account using PowerShell:

   Connect-AzAccount -TenantId <your Microsoft Entra ID tenant id>
   

Requirements

In this task, you will need to write and run a PowerShell script, which deploys a Virtual Machine and all required resources to Azure subscription:

1. Write your script code to the file task.ps1 in this repository:

   • In the script, you should assume that you are already logged in to Azure and using the correct subscription (don't use commands Connect-AzAccount and Set-AzContext, if needed - just run them on your computer before running the script).

   • Use any region you want, for example uksouth.

   • Script already has code, which uses commandlet New-AzResourceGroup to create a resource group mate-azure-task-9. Please make sure that all your resources are deployed to that resource group.

   • The script already has code that uses the commandlet New-AzNetworkSecurityGroup to create a network security group called defaultnsg. Please make sure that the VM has that network security group assigned to it.

   • Use comandlet New-AzVirtualNetwork to deploy a virtual network, called vnet and a subnet, called default.

   • Use comandlet New-AzPublicIpAddress to create a public IP address, called linuxboxpip with a DNS label.

   • Use comandlet New-AzSshKey to create an SSH key resource, called linuxboxsshkey. It is recommended (but not required) to upload your existing public SSH key to that SSH key resource (for that, you can use comandlet Get-Content to load the content of your public SSH key to the variable, and then use that variable to set the parameter -PublicKey of the -New-AzSshKey).

   • Use comandlet New-AzVm to create a linux virtual machine, called matebox.

   • VM should be deployed to the default subnet of the virtual network vnet, use public IP linuxboxpip, network security group defaultnsg, and ssh key linuxboxsshkey (check the documentation of New-AzVm — it allows you to specify names of those resources as comandlet parameters).

   • VM should use an image with the friendly name Ubuntu2204 and size Standard_B1s.

2. When the script is ready, run it to deploy resources to your subscription.

3. Deploy the web application to the virtual machine

   1. Connect to the VM using SSH, create a folder /app, and configure your user as an owned of the folder:

          ssh <your-vm-username>@<your-public-ip-DNS-name>
          sudo mkdir /app 
          sudo chown <your-vm-username>:<your-vm-username> /app
      

   2. Form your computer, copy the content of the folder app to your virtual machine (run the command in the folder of this repository):

          scp -r app/* <your-vm-username>@<your-public-ip-DNS-name>:/app
      

   3. Connect to the virtual machine again using SSH, install pre-requirements, and configure a service for the application

          sudo apt install python3-pip
          cd /app
          sudo mv todoapp.service /etc/systemd/system/ 
          sudo systemctl daemon-reload
          sudo systemctl start todoapp
          sudo systemctl enable todoapp
      

   4. Verify that the web app service is running; for that, run the following command on the VM:

          systemctl status todoapp
      

4. When the solution is validated, delete all resources you deployed with the script; they won't be used in the next tasks.

How To Complete Tasks in This Module

Tasks in this module are relying on 2 PowerShell scripts:

• scripts/generate-artifacts.ps1 generates the task “artifacts” and uploads them to cloud storage. An “artifact” is evidence of a task completed by you. Each task will have its own script, which will gather the required artifacts. The script also adds a link to the generated artifact in the artifacts.json file in this repository — make sure to commit changes to this file after you run the script.
• scripts/validate-artifacts.ps1 validates the artifacts generated by the first script. It loads information about the task artifacts from the artifacts.json file.

Here is how to complete tasks in this module:

1. Clone task repository

2. Make sure you completed the steps described in the Prerequisites section

3. Complete the task described in the Requirements section

4. Run scripts/generate-artifacts.ps1 to generate task artifacts. The script will update the file artifacts.json in this repo.

5. Run scripts/validate-artifacts.ps1 to test yourself. If tests are failing — follow the recommendation from the test script error message to fix or re-deploy your infrastructure. When you are ready to test yourself again — re-generate the artifacts (step 4) and re-run tests again.

6. Make sure that changes to both task.ps1 and result.json are committed to the repo, and submit the solution for review.

Pro tip: If you are stuck with any of the implementation steps, run scripts/generate-artifacts.ps1 and scripts/validate-artifacts.ps1. The validation script might give you a hint on what to do.

7. When the solution is validated, delete all resources you deployed with the script; they won't be used in the next tasks.