Best practice for running powershell Az module

mark.brassington · 3 May 2019 13:28

Hi, we are beginning to move over to powershell Az from AzureRM, and wondering what best practice should be on octopus? The biggest challenge being that the two shouldn’t co-exist on the same machine.

In an ideal world we would potentially uninstall AzureRM, install Az and enable aliases, as suggested here:

github.com

Azure/azure-powershell/blob/preview/documentation/announcing-az-module.md#installing-az-and-azurerm-side-by-side---discouraged

# Announcing New Module 'Az'
In August 2018 we released a new module, 'Az' which combines the functionality of the AzureRM and AzureRM.Netcore modules.  Az runs on both PowerShell 5.1 and PowerShell Core.  'Az' ensures that the PowerShell and PowerShell Core cmdlets for managing Azure resources will always be in sync and up to date.  In addition, Az will simplify and regularize the naming of Azure cmdlets, and the organization of Azure modules.  Az is intended as a replacement for the AzureRM.Netcore and AzureRM modules.

Az currently ships in Cloud Shell, and can be found on the PowerShell Gallery [here](https://www.powershellgallery.com/packages/Az/)

Az is a new module, and reorganizing and simplifying cmdlet names involves breaking changes, so we have [added features to Az to make it easier to transition to the simplified, normalized names in your existing scripts](#migrating-from-azurerm). 

## New Features
  - PowerShell 5.1 and PowerShell Core support in the same module
  - PowerShell Core Edition and PowerShell Desktop Edition cmdlets always in sync and up to date with latest Azure capabilities
  - Shortened and normalized cmdlet names - all cmdlets use the noun prefix 'Az'
  - Normalized module organization - data plane and management plane cmdlets in the same module for each service
  - Enhanced authentication for Netcore
    * Self-renewing Service Principal Authentication
    * Service Principal Certificate Authentication (in the future)
  - Enable/Disable-AzureRmAlias cmdlets to manage compatibility with scripts based on AzureRM

## Supported Platforms
  - PowerShell 5.1 with .Net Framework 4.7.2 or later [Windows only]
  - PowerShell Core 6.0 - Windows, Linux, macOS

This file has been truncated. show original

however, as noted there are potential gaps in the Az module (eg. redis) which are still being written. Despite it being discouraged, potentially side-by-side looks like the best route, with OctopusUseBundledAzureModules=False and Az installed with AllowClobber on the octo server.

Can the octo team provide any recommendations on this?

Jason_Brown · 7 May 2019 11:15

Hi Mark,

I’m Jason from the Octopus Cloud team. Derek tells me you’ve chatted with him about this ticket and he’s recommended using Workers to segregate the different Az/AzureRM versions onto different machines or containers, thereby dodging the incompatibilities between the two. I have to say, I’d concur with that idea. Did you need any further help from here, or are you happy to work with Derek going forward?

Thanks

Jason

mark.brassington · 7 May 2019 12:36

Hi Jason, yes that’s fine