Manage Azure VMs with System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM)

With Update Rollup 6 it is possible to add one or more Azure subscriptions to SCVMM 2012 R2. When the Azure subscription is added in SCVMM, it is possible to perform some basic actions such as:

  • Add and Remove one or more Azure subscriptions by using the VMM console.
  • See a list view with details and status of all role instances in all deployments in that subscription.
  • Manually refresh the list of instances.
  • Perform basic actions on the instances:
    • Start
    • Stop
    • Shutdown
    • Restart
    • Connect via RDP

To add the Azure Subscription to SCVMM 2012 R2 UR6 following these steps:

1. Install UR6 to System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) 2012 R2, link .

2. Create a self-signed Azure management certificate. The self-signed must have a key length of at least 2048 bits and should reside in the Personal certificate store. To create a self-signed management certificate, the makercert tool is used. Makecert is part of  Windows SDK. The SDK can be downloaded here, link .

Install the SDK and choose as feature to install “Windows Software Deployment”. After the installation copy the makecert tool to the SCVMM server.

3. Create the self-signed certificate with makecert with the following command:

makecert -sky exchange -r -n "CN=<CertificateName>" -pe -a sha1 -len 2048 -ss My "<CertificateName>.cer"

Example:

makecert -sky exchange -r -n "CN=ivobeerensazure" -pe -a sha1 -len 2048 -ss My d:\install\ivobeerensazure.cer

4. The certificate needs to be present in the Current User \ Personal store of the computer running the VMM console.

5. To upload a management certificate to Azure, go to the Settings page in the Management Portal, and then click MANAGEMENT CERTIFICATES.

6. In SCVMM start the Add Azure Subscription Wizard, click the Azure Add Subscription button. The wizard is a single page dialog box:

SCVMM

  • Display Name: Enter the display name
  • Subscription ID: The subscription ID can be found on the Azure website under settings
  • Certificate: Add the self-signed certificate by using the browse button

After the Azure subscription is added, the Azure Virtual Machines are listed in SCVMM:

azure

Basic actions can be performed on the Azure VMs such as:

stopstart

UR6 adds support for managing Azure VMs. The management is very basic. So hopefully on the next releases the management support for Azure VMs will be improved.