Manage an Azure VM using Cloud Shell
In this IT Pro Challenge virtual lab, you will get hands-on experience using Azure’s Cloud Shell to perform administrative tasks, like remotely managing your VMs with PowerShell and deploying and managing a web server. These skills are essential or someone on a career path towards Microsoft Server, Web Server, and Azure environment Administration.
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Lab Overview:
This hands-on lab provides an Azure administrator with an understanding of how to start Azure’s Cloud Shell and perform basic web server administrative tasks. You will become familiar with several PowerShell cmdlets to create variables, enable remote PowerShell on your VMs, establish remote PowerShell sessions and administer your VMs, and deploy and configure a web server. These skills are foundational to someone pursuing a Windows System Administration career with web servers in Microsoft Azure.
Understand the scenario
You are a system administrator for a company that is migrating virtual machines to Azure. After an initial deployment and configuration of virtual machines, you will be using Azure Cloud Shell to manage the virtual machines with PowerShell. You will use PowerShell through a cloud shell to enable PowerShell remote sessions and remotely enable and test the webserver role.
Configure Azure Cloud Shell for use with PowerShell:
Azure Cloud Shell is an interactive, authenticated, browser-accessible shell for managing Azure resources. You can choose between Bash or PowerShell, based on your shell experience and preference. A Cloud Shell requires access to a Storage Account to operate. You will configure a file share for Cloud Shell on your storage account and launch Cloud Shell using those resources.
Connect to Azure VM:
In this section, you will gain experience using PowerShell command-line syntax to create a variable, enable remote PowerShell on a VM in your environment, and connect to a remote PowerShell session. This allows you to perform remote administrative tasks on your systems via the Azure Portal, which streamlines and simplifies your tasks.
Install Windows Web Server:
For this task, you will learn more PowerShell command-line syntax to remotely install a web server, enumerate the web site, and configure a Network Security Group rule to allow HTTP access to your web site. These are basic tasks that you should be familiar with if you are deploying and managing web servers for your organization.
Test Connection to the Web Service:
The final task you will perform is to validate that the web service and web site are operational. You will browse to your new web site via its public IP address with your local browser.
Lab Summary Conclusion:
In this hands-on virtual lab, you will learn how to configure your Azure environment to use Azure’s Cloud Shell. You will use the Cloud Shell to run Windows PowerShell cmdlets to configure variables, enable remote PowerShell sessions, deploy a web server, and manage access to the webserver by configuring Network Security Group rules. The skills you will learn in this lab are basic system administration and web server administration skills for operation in an Azure cloud-based environment. With these skills, you will have a foundation for a career path in Windows system administration.
Other Challenges in this series
- Guided Challenge - Configure the Hybrid Runbook Worker Solution
- Advanced Challenge - Execute a Runbook on a Hybrid Runbook Worker
