Interesting changes to Arc Agent 1.34 with expanded detected properties

Microsoft just pushed out a change in Azure Arc Connected Agent 1.34 and with this comes some enrichment of Hybrid Servers detected properties.

This is what the properties looked like prior to the update.

Agent 1.33 and earlier

Okay… so what’s new and different?

New detected properties for Azure Arc Connected Agent 1.34

serialNumber, ProcessNames and totalPhysicalMemory

resources
| where ['type'] == "microsoft.hybridcompute/machines" 
| extend processorCount = properties.detectedProperties.processorCount,
    serialNumber = properties.detectedProperties.serialNumber,
    manufacturer= properties.detectedProperties.manufacturer,
    processorNames= properties.detectedProperties.processorNames,
    logicalCoreCount = properties.detectedProperties.logicalCoreCount,
    smbiosAssetTag = properties.detectedProperties.smbiosAssetTag,
    totalPhysicalMemoryInBytes = properties.detectedProperties.totalPhysicalMemoryInBytes,
    totalPhysicalMemoryInGigabytes = properties.detectedProperties.totalPhysicalMemoryInGigabytes
| project name,serialNumber,logicalCoreCount,manufacturer,processorCount,processorNames,totalPhysicalMemoryInBytes,totalPhysicalMemoryInGigabytes

This unlocks organizations to collect processor, serial number and memory information in a simple fashion via Azure Arc infrastructure. This can be used to look at things like consolidation and migration planning, perhaps decommissioning aging hardware even warranty lookup if you don’t have current hardware CMDB.

VS Code: one liner to install on a Windows system

This is just a quick post on how to quickly download and install VS Code for an x64 Windows system.

# One liner to install VS Code to Windows System 
$ProgressPreference = 'SilentlyContinue'; $Path = $env:TEMP; $Installer = "vscode_installer.exe"; $installerArgs = "/silent /mergetasks=!runcode,addcontextmenufiles,addcontextmenufolders,associatewithfiles,addtopath"; Invoke-WebRequest "https://code.visualstudio.com/sha/download?build=stable&os=win32-x64" -OutFile "$Path\$Installer"; Start-Process -FilePath "$Path\$Installer" -Args $installerArgs -Verb RunAs -Wait; Remove-Item "$Path\$Installer"

Here’s some background on how I obtained the URL, which was hidden away, somewhat.

Using the official page to download VS Code, it provides links to the various installers, but it doesn’t allow you use the links directly from the page to use in a script.

In order to get it, I used the dev tools from within Edge (works the same in Chrome). I pressed F12 from within the browser session, and moved to the Network tab. I clicked on the link and it allowed me to inspect what was going on with the network.

With a little trial and error, I could determine which URL would work. Check out the animation below to see the flow.

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Link to the gist:

* Updated so that VS Code does not auto open. Ref: https://gist.github.com/EmmanuelTsouris/00bcaa9a3787a6451af5567f74b4e1c6

Azure CLI: Determining location of CA certs to work with Azure Stack Hub/ASDK

I’ve been doing some work on Azure Stack HUB (ASH) and ASDK recently, and the perennial problem with certificates has raised it’s head again. This is a quick blog post for anyone using Linux and Azure CLI to administer to figure out where you should store the CA root certificates, as the documentation is somewhat vague.

• First, make sure you install the latest version of Az cli and not version 2.29, as that version has CVE’s (versions prior to 2.40.0 are affected)

• Once installed, check the version and what Python version is used (We need to make sure that any Python commands we are running uses this version. )

az --version

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• Next, install pip for the python version the az cli is using (in this case it’s Python 3.9. but future versions could change)

curl https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py -o get-pip.py
python3.9 get-pip.py

• Install the Certifi module:

pip install certifi

• Now you can determine where the cacert.pem file is located as used by az cli:

python3.9 -c "import certifi; print(certifi.where())"

• Now you can add the ASH or ASDK CA certs to the store for use by Azure CLI:

cat <CA Cert>.pem >> ~/.local/lib/python3.9/site-packages/certifi/cacert.pem

You can use the docs here to obtain the CA root certificate, or if you’re running a Linux VM from within ASH/ASDK, simply run:

sudo cat /var/lib/waagent/Certificates.pem >> ~/.local/lib/python3.9/site-packages/certifi/cacert.pem

- If you were to follow the Microsoft docs, I found az cli would still not be able to communicate successfully.

It is necessary to run the following:

export REQUESTS_CA_BUNDLE=~/.local/lib/python3.9/site-packages/certifi/cacert.pem
# RECOMMENDED: set the env var automatically for your subsequent sessions
echo 'export REQUESTS_CA_BUNDLE=~/.local/lib/python3.9/site-packages/certifi/cacert.pem' >> ~/.bash_profile

As you can see above, I have been able to run az cli targeting ASDK, whereas before, it would throw the SSL error.

Tested on CentOS 8 and Rocky Linux 8.5

The process cannot access the file psconfig.json because it is being used by another process

If you have been having issues deploying Azure Arc Resource Bridge on AKS and running into various issues like the one above for Azure Stack HCI. Microsoft has recently published new guidance. Some pages still have conflicting messaging. I hope this pointer might help someone else.

We do NOT recommend or support running AKS on Azure Stack HCI and Azure Arc Resource Bridge on the same Azure Stack HCI or Windows Server cluster. If you have AKS on Azure Stack HCI installed, run Uninstall-AksHci and start deploying your Azure Arc Resource Bridge from scratch.

Microsoft Learn Reference

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/aks/hybrid/troubleshoot-aks-hybrid-preview#issues-with-using-aks-hci-and-azure-arc-resource-bridge