Recently, there is a new way to manage the Azure infrastructure with Resource Manager. It brings many advantages regarding the classic deployment.
The differences between these two deployments will not be covered in this blog because it is not the initial goal, and it already exists a very good Microsoft topic on this subject.

In this blog, we will generate a new Windows Azure Virtual Machine using Resource Manager deployment with PowerShell from On-Premise.

Remember, only RM object can be listed with RM cmdlets! On the contrary, only Classic object can be listed with Classic cmdlets!

We can connect automatically to Azure Account with this command:
Select-AzureRmProfile -Path "C:tempAzureCert.json"

But to download this certificate, we need to connect manually to Azure Account at least once as follows:
Add-AzureRmAccount -SubscriptionId "<YourSubscriptionID>"

Enter your personal credentials and then run the following command:
Save-AzureRmProfile -Path "C:tempAzureCert.json"

If you want to navigate through your different attached Azure Subscriptions, use the cmdlets Get-AzureRmSubscription/Set-AzureRmSubcription.

To obtain the different existing Azure Locations:
Get-AzureRmLocation | Select DisplayName

For the end of this blog, we will work in this specific Azure Location:
$location = "West Europe"

Hardware Profile

To list all different available Resource Group:
Get-AzureRmResourceGroup | Select ResourceGroupName, Location

And select your specific Azure Resource Group:
$resourceGroupName = (Get-AzureRmResourceGroup).ResourceGroupName[0]

To choose the correct VM size, list all available Azure formats:
Get-AzureRmVMSize -location $location | Select Name, NumberOfCores, MemoryInMB
$vmSize = "Standard_A3"

And initialize the VM object to build:
$vm = New-AzureRMVMConfig -Name $vmname -VMSize $vmsize

Image Profile

Now we want to select a specific image available from a publisher in Azure. In this case, we will choose the last SQL Server 2016 Enterprise edition ISO.
The different steps will describe the method to find out all the elements to select the correct available image.

Select all publishers from a specific Azure Location:
Get-AzureRmVMImagePublisher -Location $location | Select PublisherName
$publisher = "MicrosoftSQLServer"

Now select all offers from a specific Azure Publisher:
Get-AzureRmVMImageOffer -Location $location -PublisherName $publisher | Select Offer
$offer = "SQL2016-WS2012R2"

Then select all Skus from a specific Azure Offer:
Get-AzureRmVMImageSku -Location $location -PublisherName $publisher -Offer $offer | Select Skus
$skus = "Enterprise"

Finally choose your version:
(Get-AzureRmVMImage -Location $location -PublisherName $publisher -Offer $publisher -Skus $skus).version

To obtain the last version of the image:
$Version = (Get-AzureRmVMImage -Location $location -PublisherName $publisher -Offer $offer -Skus $skus | sort -Descending).version[0]

Add the image profile to the existing VM object:
$vm = Set-AzureRmVMSourceImage -VM $vm -PublisherName $publisher -Offer $offer -Skus $skus -Version $version

OS Profile

According to the Image Profile, the Virtual Machine will be a Windows Server. So enter the specifications as follows:
$username = "dbi"
$password = ConvertTo-SecureString "B3stPa$$w0rd3v3r" -AsPlainText –Force
$cred = New-Object System.Management.Automation.PSCredential ($username, $password)
$vm = Set-AzureRmVMOperatingSystem -VM $VM -ComputerName "Artanis" -Windows -Credential $cred -ProvisionVMAgent

Disk Profile

As the VM will be created from an Azure Image, we need to specify a location and a name for the OS disk.

To list all your available Azure Storage Accounts, run this command:
Get-AzureRmStorageAccount | Select StorageAccountName, Location

To list the different containers available in your Azure Storage:
(Get-AzureRmStorageAccount | Get-AzureStorageContainer).CloudBlobContainer

And now add a disk profile to the existing VM:
$diskLocation = "https://<accountStorageName>.blob.core.windows.net/vhds/"
$vm = Set-AzureRmVMOSDisk -VM $vm -Name "artanisVHDOS.vhd" -VhdUri ($diskLocation+"artanisVHDOS.vhd") -CreateOption FromImage

IP Profile

Here is an example of Network configuration:
$subnet = New-AzureRmVirtualNetworkSubnetConfig -Name "CloudSubnet" -AddressPrefix "10.0.64.0/24"
$ain = New-AzureRmVirtualNetwork -Name "VirtualNetwork" -ResourceGroupName $resourceGroupName -Location $location -AddressPrefix "10.0.0.0/16" -Subnet $subnet
$pip = New-AzureRmPublicIpAddress -Name "AzurePublicIP" -ResourceGroupName $resourceGroupName -AllocationMethod Dynamic -Location $location
$nic = New-AzureRMNetworkInterface -Name "AzureNetInterface" -ResourceGroupName $resourceGroupName -Location $location SubnetId $ain.Subnets[0].Id -PublicIpAddressId $pip.Id

Conclusion: VM generation

Now we have entered all different profiles required to generate a new Windows Azure VM:
$azurevm = New-AzureRmVM -ResourceGroupName $resourceGroupName -Location $location -VM $vm

Use “Get-AzureRmVM” cmdlet to list all available VMs.

To download the remote desktop file to connect to this new virtual machine, use the following command:
Get-AzureRmRemoteDesktopFile -ResourceGroupName $resourceGroupName -Name $vmName -LocalPath "C:TempArtanis.rdp"

With all these commands, you can realize how simple it is to automate the generation of a new Virtual Machine in Azure. Moreover you should probably have noticed the construction of the VM object (with the different profiles) is similar to Hyper-V structure.

I hope it helps you 😉