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Manage and deploy resources to Azure Stack Hub with Azure CLI - Modular Data Center (MDC)

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Applies to: Azure Stack Hub integrated systems

Follow the steps in this article to set up the Azure Command-Line Interface (CLI) to manage Azure Stack Hub resources from Linux, Mac, and Windows client platforms.

Prepare for Azure CLI

The virtual machine aliases endpoint provides an alias, like "UbuntuLTS" or "Win2012Datacenter." This alias references an image publisher, offer, SKU, and version as a single parameter when deploying VMs.

The following section describes how to set up the virtual machine aliases endpoint.

Set up the virtual machine aliases endpoint

You can set up a publicly accessible endpoint that hosts a VM alias file. The VM alias file is a JSON file that provides a common name for an image. You use the name when you deploy a VM as an Azure CLI parameter.

  1. If you publish a custom image, make note of the publisher, offer, SKU, and version information that you specified during publishing. If it's an image from the Marketplace, you can view the information by using the Get-AzureVMImage cmdlet.

  2. Download the sample file from GitHub.

  3. Create a storage account in Azure Stack Hub. When that's done, create a blob container. Set the access policy to "public."

  4. Upload the JSON file to the new container. When that's done, you can view the URL of the blob. Select the blob name and then selecting the URL from the blob properties.

Install or upgrade CLI

Sign in to your development workstation and install CLI. Azure Stack Hub requires version 2.0 or later of Azure CLI. The latest version of the API Profiles requires a current version of the CLI. You install the CLI by using the steps described in the Install the Azure CLI article.

To verify whether the installation was successful, open a terminal or command prompt window and run the following command:

az --version

You should see the version of Azure CLI and other dependent libraries that are installed on your computer.

Azure CLI on Azure Stack Hub Python location

Windows/Linux (Microsoft Entra ID)

This section walks you through setting up CLI if you're using Microsoft Entra ID as your identity management service, and are using CLI on a Windows/Linux machine.

Connect to Azure Stack Hub

  1. Register your Azure Stack Hub environment by running the az cloud register command.

  2. Register your environment. Use the following parameters when running az cloud register:

    Value Example Description
    Environment name AzureStackUser Use AzureStackUser for the user environment. If you're operator, specify AzureStackAdmin.
    Resource Manager endpoint https://management.local.azurestack.external The ResourceManagerUrl in integrated systems is: https://management.<region>.<fqdn>/ If you have a question about the integrated system endpoint, contact your cloud operator.
    Storage endpoint local.azurestack.external For an integrated system, use an endpoint for your system.
    Keyvault suffix .vault.local.azurestack.external For an integrated system, use an endpoint for your system.
    VM image alias doc endpoint- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Azure/azure-rest-api-specs/master/arm-compute/quickstart-templates/aliases.json URI of the document, which contains VM image aliases. For more info, see Set up the VM aliases endpoint. 
    az cloud register -n <environmentname> --endpoint-resource-manager "https://management.local.azurestack.external" --suffix-storage-endpoint "local.azurestack.external" --suffix-keyvault-dns ".vault.local.azurestack.external" --endpoint-vm-image-alias-doc <URI of the document which contains VM image aliases>

  3. Set the active environment by using the following commands.

    az cloud set -n <environmentname>

  4. Update your environment configuration to use the Azure Stack Hub specific API version profile. To update the configuration, run the following command:

    az cloud update --profile 2019-03-01-hybrid

  5. Sign in to your Azure Stack Hub environment by using the az login command. Sign in to the Azure Stack Hub environment either as a user or as a service principal.

    • Sign in as a user:

      You can either specify the username and password directly within the az login command, or authenticate by using a browser. You must do the latter if your account has multi-factor authentication enabled:

      az login -u <Microsoft Entra administrator or user account. For example: username@<aadtenant>.onmicrosoft.com> --tenant <Azure Active Directory Tenant name. For example: myazurestack.onmicrosoft.com>

      Note

      If your user account has multi-factor authentication enabled, use the az login command without providing the -u parameter. Running this command gives you a URL and a code that you must use to authenticate.

    • Sign in as a service principal:

      Before you sign in, create a service principal through the Azure portal or CLI and assign it a role. Now, sign in by using the following command:

      az login --tenant <Azure Active Directory Tenant name. For example: myazurestack.onmicrosoft.com> --service-principal -u <Application Id of the Service Principal> -p <Key generated for the Service Principal>

Test the connectivity

With everything set up, use CLI to create resources within Azure Stack Hub. For example, you can create a resource group for an app and add a VM. Use the following command to create a resource group named "MyResourceGroup":

az group create -n MyResourceGroup -l local

If the resource group is created successfully, the previous command outputs the following properties of the newly created resource:

Resource group create output

Windows/Linux (AD FS)

This section walks you through setting up CLI if you're using Active Directory Federated Services (AD FS) as your identity management service, and are using CLI on a Windows/Linux machine.

Connect to Azure Stack Hub

  1. Register your Azure Stack Hub environment by running the az cloud register command.

  2. Register your environment. Use the following parameters when running az cloud register:

    Value Example Description
    Environment name AzureStackUser Use AzureStackUser for the user environment. If you're operator, specify AzureStackAdmin.
    Resource Manager endpoint https://management.local.azurestack.external The ResourceManagerUrl in integrated systems is: https://management.<region>.<fqdn>/ If you have a question about the integrated system endpoint, contact your cloud operator.
    Storage endpoint local.azurestack.external For an integrated system, use an endpoint for your system.
    Keyvault suffix .vault.local.azurestack.external For an integrated system, use an endpoint for your system.
    VM image alias doc endpoint- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Azure/azure-rest-api-specs/master/arm-compute/quickstart-templates/aliases.json URI of the document, which contains VM image aliases. For more info, see Set up the VM aliases endpoint. 
    az cloud register -n <environmentname> --endpoint-resource-manager "https://management.local.azurestack.external" --suffix-storage-endpoint "local.azurestack.external" --suffix-keyvault-dns ".vault.local.azurestack.external" --endpoint-vm-image-alias-doc <URI of the document which contains VM image aliases>

  3. Set the active environment by using the following commands.

    az cloud set -n <environmentname>

  4. Update your environment configuration to use the Azure Stack Hub specific API version profile. To update the configuration, run the following command:

    az cloud update --profile 2019-03-01-hybrid

  5. Sign in to your Azure Stack Hub environment by using the az login command. You can sign in to the Azure Stack Hub environment either as a user or as a service principal.

    • Sign in as a user:

      You can either specify the username and password directly within the az login command, or authenticate by using a browser. You must do the latter if your account has multi-factor authentication enabled:

      az cloud register  -n <environmentname>   --endpoint-resource-manager "https://management.local.azurestack.external"  --suffix-storage-endpoint "local.azurestack.external" --suffix-keyvault-dns ".vault.local.azurestack.external" --endpoint-vm-image-alias-doc <URI of the document which contains VM image aliases>   --profile "2019-03-01-hybrid"

      Note

      If your user account has multi-factor authentication enabled, use the az login command without providing the -u parameter. Running this command gives you a URL and a code that you must use to authenticate.

    • Sign in as a service principal:

      Prepare the .pem file to be used for service principal login.

      On the client machine where the principal was created, export the service principal certificate as a pfx with the private key located at cert:\CurrentUser\My. The cert name has the same name as the principal.

      Convert the pfx to pem (use the OpenSSL utility).

      Sign in to the CLI:

      az login --service-principal \
-u <Client ID from the Service Principal details> \
-p <Certificate's fully qualified name, such as, C:\certs\spn.pem>
--tenant <Tenant ID> \
--debug

Test the connectivity

With everything set up, use CLI to create resources within Azure Stack Hub. For example, you can create a resource group for an app and add a VM. Use the following command to create a resource group named "MyResourceGroup":

az group create -n MyResourceGroup -l local

If the resource group is created successfully, the previous command outputs the following properties of the newly created resource:

Resource group create output

Known issues

There are known issues when using CLI in Azure Stack Hub:

  • The CLI interactive mode. For example, the az interactive command, isn't yet supported in Azure Stack Hub.
  • To get the list of VM images available in Azure Stack Hub, use the az vm image list --all command instead of the az vm image list command. Specifying the --all option ensures that the response returns only the images that are available in your Azure Stack Hub environment.
  • VM image aliases that are available in Azure may not be applicable to Azure Stack Hub. When using VM images, you must use the entire URN parameter (Canonical:UbuntuServer:14.04.3-LTS:1.0.0) instead of the image alias. This URN must match the image specifications as derived from the az vm images list command.

Next steps