Questions Regarding Azure VM Management and Best Practices

Question

Hello everyone,

I’d like to ask for some ideas or insights from the community regarding the management of my Azure environment.

I manage around 100 VMs in Azure Cloud, and sometimes, I miss the simplicity of doing basic tasks, such as:

• "Installing or removing a program across all VMs"
• "Installing a security KB on each VM"
• "Adding a shortcut to the desktop"

I’ve considered using GPOs for these tasks. However, they don’t seem to work as well on Azure VMs as they do in my on-premises environment, possibly due to some firewall rule or network configuration issue.

How do you handle software management and ensure your VMs are properly configured in your Azure environment? Any strategies or tools you could recommend would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you in advance for your suggestions!

Answer 1

@razec18

Thanks for your question. I would first recommend Azure Update Manager. This allows you to oversee update compliance for all your machines, whether they are in Azure, on-premises, or in other cloud environments.

For installation or configuration of your VMs you can utilize Azure Policy's machine configuration feature. Azure Machine Configuration allows you to audit and configure operating system settings as code for machines running in Azure and hybrid environments. It can be applied directly to individual machines or orchestrated at scale using Azure Policy.

Check these out and let me know if they are helpful. If you have other requirements let me know and I will be happy to address them or provide alternatives.

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