Using automation to manage server update in Azure practice

Today, let's talk about another key aspect of automation, that is, update management. Unlike configuration management,update management, which is mainly used to manage patches in windows and Linux VM, update management, like configuration management, can manage not only patches for VM in Windows, but also patches for non-Azure servers.

The following is the overall process of update

Generally speaking, the basic idea is to first check the deployment schedule, check the deployment time, etc., then check the maintenance plan and the status of the deployment, and then you can deploy it. Linux will be updated through Yum or apt, while windows is update agent.

Of course, for the version of OS, update management still has certain requirements. Windows does not support windows client, such as windows 7, windows 10, etc., and OS below windows server 2008 is not supported.

In terms of Linux, such as Cent OS 6 and 7, these are supported.

Of course, update management, like configuration management, needs to be supported by log analystic and MMA Agent. You can check configuration management's blog to see how to enable these services, so I won't go into detail here.

Let's take a look at how to use update management. To take a simple example, if a windows vm wants to enable update management, you can first go to automation account and find the update management,enable function.

After Enable, you can see that you can already see the information in update management. Add Azure VM directly here.

Then find the vm that is ready before and open it directly.

After waiting for a period of time (it is recommended to restart VM, otherwise it may take a long time), you can already see this VM.

You can see in missing update that there are some update that are not done.

Below, let's define some details of update. You can click new update deployment, where you can define in detail the content that requires update, such as time, frequency, specific patches to update, etc., and you can also classify servers. Different group servers use different strategies.

After the definition is completed, when the time for update is up, you can see the progress and results of update deployment in update deployments in update management.

At the same time, you can also see that update is up to date in VM!