| title | description | services | ms.service | author | ms.author | ms.date | ms.topic | manager | ms.custom |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Learn how to onboard Update Management, Change Tracking, and Inventory solutions in Azure Automation |
Learn how to onboard an Azure Virtual machine with Update Management, Change Tracking, and Inventory solutions that are part of Azure Automation |
automation |
automation |
georgewallace |
gwallace |
10/16/2018 |
conceptual |
carmonm |
mvc |
Azure Automation provides solutions to manage operating system security updates, track changes, and inventory what is installed on your computers. There are many ways to onboard machines, you can onboard the solution from a virtual machine, from browsing multiple machines, from your Automation account, or by runbook. This article covers onboarding these solutions from your Automation account.
Sign in to Azure at https://portal.azure.com
Navigate to your Automation account and select either Inventory or Change tracking under CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT.
Choose the Log analytics workspace and Automation account and click Enable to enable the solution. The solution takes up to 15 minutes to enable.
The Change Tracking and Inventory solution provides the ability to track changes and inventory on your virtual machines. In this step, you enable the solution on a virtual machine.
When the change tracking and inventory solution onboarding notification completes, click on Update Management under CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT.
The Update Management solution allows you to manage updates and patches for your Azure Windows VMs. You can assess the status of available updates, schedule installation of required updates, and review deployment results to verify updates were applied successfully to the VM. This action enabled the solution for your VM.
Select Update management under UPDATE MANAGEMENT. The Log analytics workspace selected is the same workspace used in the preceding step. Click Enable to onboard the Update management solution. The solution takes up to 15 minutes to enable.
Each solution uses a Scope Configuration within the workspace to target the computers that get the solution. The Scope Configuration is a group of one or more saved searches that is used to limit the scope of the solution to specific computers. To access the Scope Configurations, in your Automation account under RELATED RESOURCES, select Workspace. Then in the workspace under WORKSPACE DATA SOURCES, select Scope Configurations.
If the selected workspace doesn't have the Update Management or Change Tracking solutions yet, the following scope configurations are created:
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MicrosoftDefaultScopeConfig-ChangeTracking
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MicrosoftDefaultScopeConfig-Updates
If the selected workspace already has the solution, the solution isn't re-deployed, and the scope configuration isn't added to it.
When a computer is added to the Update Management or the Change Tracking and Inventory solutions, they're added to one of two saved searches in your workspace. These saved searches are queries that contain the computers that are targeted for these solutions.
Navigate to your Automation account and select Saved searches under General. The two saved searches used by these solutions can be seen in the following table:
| Name | Category | Alias |
|---|---|---|
| MicrosoftDefaultComputerGroup | ChangeTracking | ChangeTracking__MicrosoftDefaultComputerGroup |
| MicrosoftDefaultComputerGroup | Updates | Updates__MicrosoftDefaultComputerGroup |
Select either saved search to view the query used to populate the group. The following image shows the query and its results:
From your Automation account select Inventory or Change tracking under CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT, or Update management under UPDATE MANAGEMENT.
Click + Add Azure VMs, select one or more VMs from the list. Virtual machines that can't be enabled are greyed out and unable to be selected. On the Enable Update Management page, click Enable. This action adds the selected VMs to the computer group saved search for the solution.
Machines not in Azure need to be added manually. From your Automation account select Inventory or Change tracking under CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT, or Update management under UPDATE MANAGEMENT.
Click Add non-Azure machine. This action opens up a new browser window with the instructions on how to install and configure the Microsoft Monitoring Agent on the machine so the machine can begin reporting to the solution. If you're onboarding a machine that currently managed by System Center Operations Manager, a new agent isn't required, the workspace information is entered into the existing agent.
Manually installed machines or machines already reporting to your workspace must to be added to Azure Automation for the solution to be enabled. From your Automation account select Inventory or Change tracking under CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT, or Update management under UPDATE MANAGEMENT.
Select Manage machines. This action opens up the Manage Machines page. This page allows you to enable the solution on a select set of machines, all available machines, or enable the solution for all current machines and enable it on all future machines. The Manage machines button may be greyed out if you previously chose the option Enable on all available and future machines.
To enable the solution for all available machines, select Enable on all available machines. This action disables the control to add machines individually. This task adds all the names of the machines reporting to the workspace to the computer group saved search query. When selected, this action disables the Manage Machines button.
To enable the solution for all available machines and future machines, select Enable on all available and future machines. This option deletes the saved searches and Scope Configurations from the workspace. This action opens the solution to all Azure and non-Azure machines that are reporting to the workspace. When selected, this action disables the Manage Machines button permanently as there's no Scope Configuration left.
To enable the solution for one or more machines, select Enable on selected machines and click add next to each machine you want to add to the solution. This task adds the selected machine names to the computer group saved search query for the solution.
The following solutions are dependent on a Log Analytics workspace:
If you decide you no longer wish to integrate your Automation account with Log Analytics, you can unlink your account directly from the Azure portal. Before you continue, you first need to remove the solutions mentioned earlier, otherwise this process will be prevented from proceeding. Review the article for the particular solution you've imported to understand the steps required to remove it.
After you remove these solutions, you can complete the following steps to unlink your Automation account.
Note
Some solutions including earlier versions of the Azure SQL monitoring solution may have created automation assets and may also need to be removed prior to unlinking the workspace.
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From the Azure portal, open your Automation account, and on the Automation account page select Linked workspace under the section labeled Related Resources on the left.
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On the Unlink workspace page, click Unlink workspace.
.You will receive a prompt verifying you wish to continue.
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While Azure Automation tries to unlink the account your Log Analytics workspace, you can track the progress under Notifications from the menu.
If you used the Update Management solution, optionally you may want to remove the following items that are no longer needed after you remove the solution.
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Update schedules - Each will have names that match the update deployments you created)
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Hybrid worker groups created for the solution - Each will be named similarly to machine1.contoso.com_9ceb8108-26c9-4051-b6b3-227600d715c8).
If you used the Start and Stop VMs during off-hours solution, optionally you may want to remove the following items that are no longer needed after you remove the solution.
- Start and stop VM runbook schedules
- Start and stop VM runbooks
- Variables
Continue to the tutorials on the solutions to learn how to use them.