In a previous post I wrote about Using a Hyper-V VHD in an Azure VM. Today I’d like to show you what my next steps were.  My goal with using Azure is to create an lab environment for student that fits the following needs:

• Easy to create new virtual environments
• Easy to power down virtual environments
• Easy to power up virtual environments
• Easy to delete all virtual environments

The point of this post is to guide you through how to easily create virtual machines for multiple students or employees in a quick and easy script. By the way, I have previously posted how to solve the problem of powering up and powering down the virtual lab environments in my blog about Setting up Automation in Azure.

Creating an Image

These steps will guide you through how to take what you learned in my blog about Using a Hyper-V VHD in an Azure VM and create and image from your VHD you uploaded. You would also create an image from a Virtual Machine that you created from the Azure Gallery. Once an image is created you can then spin off as many virtual machines as you would like from that image.

• Login to the Azure Management Portal.
• Navigate to the Virtual Machines page and select Images on the top of the screen.
• Select Create on the bottom of the screen to build a new image.

• Name the image and provide the VHD url location where you are storing your vhd. If you followed my previous blog on uploading you local VHD then this would be the storage account and container that you uploaded to. You must run Sysprep on your virtual machine if you want to create an image from it.

PowerShell to Create your VMs

The the image created you can now either manually create new virtual machines from the image or use PowerShell to scale your solution better. For me Powershell made most sense because I’m not trying to build just one virtual machine. In my case I actually need to build 15 identical virtual machines (for 15 students) based off the same image.

• If you haven’t already download and Install the Windows Azure PowerShell module http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?linkid=320376&clcid=0×409
• Launch Windows Azure PowerShell
• Before you start using the Windows Azure PowerShell cmdlets, you need to configure connectivity between your machine and Windows Azure. One way to do this is by downloading the PublishSettings file from Windows Azure and importing it. Using the PowerShell prompt enter the following commands:
  • Get-AzurePublishSettingsFile
  • Import-AzurePublishSettingsFile “C:\SubscriptionCredentials.publishsettings”
• Download my PowerShell script called CreateVMs.ps1. Essentially you point this script to your image and cloud service and tell it how many VMs you want and it loops over your image until all the VMs you asked for are created.

param([Int32]$vmcount = 3)# Create Azure VMs for Class
# run in Powershell window by typing .\CreateVMs.ps1 -vmcount 3

$startnumber = 1
$vmName = "VirtualMachineName"
$password = "pass@word01"
$adminUsername = "Student"
$cloudSvcName = "CloudServiceName"
$image = "ImageName"
$size = "Large"
$vms = @()
for($i = $startnumber; $i -le $vmcount; $i++)
{
$vmn = $vmName + $i
New-AzureVMConfig -Name $vmn -InstanceSize $size -ImageName $image |
Add-AzureEndpoint -Protocol tcp -LocalPort 3389 -PublicPort 3389 -Name "RemoteDesktop" |
Add-AzureProvisioningConfig -Windows -AdminUsername $adminUsername -Password $password |
New-AzureVM -ServiceName $cloudSvcName
}

• Modify any of my generic parameters I’ve provided in the file.  You’ll likely need to modify the default values of the following
  • $vmName
  • $password
  • $adminUsername
  • $cloudSvcName
  • $image
  • $size (Optional, right now mine creates large VMs so you may want to adjust this)
• This script also accepts one parameter that you can key in the value for externally. The –VMCount parameter allows you to specify exactly how many virtual machines you would like based on your image. To run this script use this command in your PowerShell window. Using the number 3 here will produce 3 virtual machines for me.

.\CreateVMs.ps1 -vmcount 3

• If I were to run this script without changing any of the embedded parameters it would produce 3 virtual machines with the following names:
  • VirtualMachineName1
  • VirtualMachineName2
  • VirtualMachineName3

Once your virtual machines are created your next step is to consider if you want to keep them running all the time or only during business hours. Keep in mind you only pay for the time your virtual machines are started. For my scenario I wanted to turn my machines off during non business hours and back on in the morning, which can be automated through Azure Automation. Read this post on Setting up Azure Automation.