Keeping your Linux and Windows Machines updated with Azure!

In this Episode, we are joined with our colleagues Allen Brokken and Shannon Kuehn on how they leveraged components of Azure to introduce automation for a customer to keep 1000’s of VMs updated regardless of where the infrastructure is running!

This was accomplished using in-built capabilities in Azure called update management and a component called Hybrid runbook workers. This is facilitated by a feature called Azure Automation which you can think of as a server-less script scheduler and execution environment in the cloud. In a nutshell, hybrid workers are machines running anywhere (on-premises, Azure or other clouds) with a specialized agent installed that permits Azure Automation to instruct these targeted machines the ability to perform work within a private/isolated network. Azure Automation can easily target resources within Azure; but should it need to do something such as apply a specific update to a machine within the boundaries of a private datacenter the hybrid worker provides a firewall friendly facility to poll for work to run locally. In this video we walk through how this can all be stitched together to address the simple task of keeping servers up to date at scale!

About the Author

Ryan Berry

Hello! I am a technology professional with over 20 years of successfully selling, designing, and implementing IT solutions of all sizes. I have a sincere passion for technology both inside and outside of work involving myself with community events such as .NET user groups, FIRST robotics and in helping college bound high schoolers prepare for success through mock technology interviews. It’s easy to be successful in a role that you love and coming to work for me means I get to play with new and innovative technologies to bring bold new ideas to customers solving their business challenges. In my current role, I take the complex world of the cloud and Microsoft Azure, a portfolio of capabilities consisting of over 100 products, and help customers in properly selecting capabilities, tooling, and technical frameworks to product results. My vast technical background spanning technologies such as embedded development, Windows debugging and C# to open-source technologies such as PHP, Python, MySQL and Linux aids allows me to quickly dive into a problem and identify solutions producing quick results using the power of the cloud!