{"id":79422,"date":"2018-06-26T15:12:41","date_gmt":"2018-06-26T15:12:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.red-gate.com\/simple-talk\/?p=79422"},"modified":"2021-02-23T19:21:38","modified_gmt":"2021-02-23T19:21:38","slug":"azure-and-windows-powershell-getting-information","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.red-gate.com\/simple-talk\/sysadmin\/powershell\/azure-and-windows-powershell-getting-information\/","title":{"rendered":"Azure and Windows PowerShell: Getting Information"},"content":{"rendered":"

The series so far:<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Azure and Windows PowerShell: The Basics<\/a><\/li>\n
  2. Azure and Windows PowerShell: Getting Information<\/a><\/li>\n
  3. Azure and Windows PowerShell: Using VM Extensions<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n

    PowerShell provides a great way of automating many things thus saving the time and effort of an Azure administrator. In the case of Automating Azure tasks, Microsoft has provided the Microsoft Azure PowerShell Module, which can be used to write scripts. As described in the first part of this series, this module is great and provides functionalities that will be described all along this series. But one of the main things to do when you will write your Azure scripts is that you must sign onto your Azure subscription first. You need to install the AzureAD PowerShell module and then use the Login-AzureRMAccount<\/strong> cmdlet. This cmdlet can be used to perform the login process, but the login needs to be done manually by entering the login and password of the Azure account in the popup window. As obvious it is, there can be no manual intervention during this process! Therefore, before going deeper in this article, I will explain how to get around this problem using Azure Service Principal<\/strong> to automate this login process.<\/p>\n

    What is a Service Principal?<\/h2>\n

    A service principal is an identity your application can use to log in and access Azure resources. Azure Administrators need to perform a one-time activity to set up a Service Principal, which is similar to a service account. Following are the steps that need to be done so that they can automate the process:<\/p>\n