How to remove a configuration and node from Automation State Configuration

Note

Azure Automation State Configuration will be retired on September 30, 2027, please transition to Azure Machine Configuration by that date. For more information, see the blog post announcement. The Azure Machine Configuration service combines features of DSC Extension, Azure Automation State Configuration, and the most commonly requested features from customer feedback. Azure Machine Configuration also includes hybrid machine support through Arc-enabled servers.

Caution

Azure Automation DSC for Linux has retired on 30 September 2023. For more information, see the announcement.

This article covers how to unregister a node managed by Automation State Configuration, and safely removes a PowerShell Desired State Configuration (DSC) configuration from managed nodes. For both Windows and Linux nodes, you need to unregister the node and Delete a configuration from the node. For Linux nodes only, you can optionally delete the DSC packages from the nodes as well. See Remove the DSC package from a Linux node.

Unregister a node

Note

Unregistering a node from the service only sets the Local Configuration Manager settings so the node is no longer connecting to the service. This doesn't affect the configuration that's currently applied to the node, and leaves the related files in place on the node. After you unregister/delete the node, to re-register it, clear the existing configuration files. See Delete a configuration from the node.

If you no longer want to manage a node using DSC, you can unregister it from the Azure portal or with Azure PowerShell using the following steps.

Azure portal

1. Sign in to the Azure portal.

2. Search for and select Automation Accounts.

3. On the Automation Accounts page, select your Automation account from the list.

4. From your Automation account, select State configuration (DSC) under Configuration Management.

5. On the State configuration (DSC) page, select the Nodes tab.

6. On the Nodes tab, select the name of the node you want to unregister.

7. On the pane for that node, select Unregister.

   

Azure PowerShell

You can also unregister a node using the PowerShell cmdlet Unregister-AzAutomationDscNode.

Note

If your organization still uses the deprecated AzureRM modules, you can use Unregister-AzureRmAutomationDscNode.

Delete a configuration from the node

Use either of the following steps to remove an imported DSC configuration document (.mof file) assigned to one or more nodes.

Azure portal

You can delete configurations for both Windows and Linux nodes from the Azure portal.

1. Sign in to the Azure portal.

2. Search for and select Automation Accounts.

3. On the Automation Accounts page, select your Automation account from the list.

4. From your Automation account, select State configuration (DSC) under Configuration Management.

5. On the State configuration (DSC) page, select the Configurations tab, then select the name of the configuration you want to delete.

   

6. On the configuration's detail page, select Delete to remove the configuration.

   

Manual Deletion

To manually delete the .mof configuration files, follow the steps:

Delete a Windows configuration using PowerShell

To remove an imported DSC configuration document (.mof), use the Remove-DscConfigurationDocument cmdlet.

Delete a Linux configuration

To delete the node's configuration, remove the .mof configuration files stored in the /etc/opt/omi/conf/dsc/configuration/ directory.

Re-register a node

You can re-register a node just as you registered the node initially, using any of the methods described in Enable Azure Automation State Configuration

Remove the DSC package from a Linux node

This step is optional. Unregistering a Linux node from State Configuration (DSC) doesn't remove the DSC and OMI packages from the machine. Use the following commands to remove the packages, all logs, and related data.

To find the package names and other relevant details, see the PowerShell Desired State Configuration for Linux GitHub repository.

RPM-based systems

rpm -e <package name>

dpkg-based systems

dpkg -P <package name>

Next steps

• If you want to re-register the node, or register a new one, see Register a VM to be managed by State Configuration.
• If you want to add the configuration back and recompile, see Compile DSC configurations in Azure Automation State Configuration.