Tag Archives: Virtualization

Azure RDWEB page is blank when accessing it with authorized users

Blank page on RDWeb for users

When you have finished deploying Azure WVD machines and added those machines in the correct hosts you might fall into this error by a chance and not easily be able to understand or see it.

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During the creation of Host Pools and AppGroups you might want to create your own fancy Host pool names and app group names, This is something normal but not when you want to use Azure WVD.

What Happens?

When you create an app group name other than the ones already existing (Desktop Application Group) you have to make sure that you would type this group name into the ARM Template since while deploying the VMs and typing the template would choose the default Application Group Name.

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Error 1

The connection to the remote PC was lost. This might be because of a network connection problem. If this keeps happening, ask your admin or tech support for help.

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Error 2

User is assigned to the wrong Application Group

add-RdsAppGroupUser : The specified UserPrincipalName is already assigned to a RemoteApp AppGroup in the specified HostPool.

ActivityId: feb39a7b-b74f-49d3-a100-1fc22ec66454

Powershell commands to diagnose the failure:

Get-RdsDiagnosticActivities -ActivityId feb39a7b-b74f-49d3-a100-1fc22ec66454

At line:4 char:1

+ add-RdsAppGroupUser -TenantName cagriandMoh10ly -HostPoolName WVD-Hos …

+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

+ CategoryInfo : FromStdErr: (Microsoft.RDInf…RdsAppGroupUser:AddRdsAppGroupUser) [Add-RdsAppGroupUser], RdsPowerShellException

+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : UpnAlreadyHasRemoteAppAssignment,Microsoft.RDInfra.RDPowershell.AppGroupUser.AddRdsAppGroupUser

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Solution:

Remove the user from the other application group and add him to the one where you have your RdsSessionHost that you would like your users to access.

Connect to Azure-AD first and run the following command, Make sure you specify the AppGroupName that you want to remove your users from and the AD Group that’s relevant to those users.

foreach($UPN in (Get-AzureADGroupMember -ObjectId ((Get-AzureADGroup | Where-Object DisplayName -Like “WVDUsers”).ObjectId)).UserPrincipalName)

{

Write-Output $UPN

Remove-RdsAppGroupUser -TenantName cagriandMoh10ly -HostPoolName WVD-Host-Pool01 -AppGroupName “Desktop App Group” -UserPrincipalName $UPN

}

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Add the Users again and see what happens

foreach($UPN in (Get-AzureADGroupMember -ObjectId ((Get-AzureADGroup | Where-Object DisplayName -Like “WVDUsers”).ObjectId)).UserPrincipalName)

{

Write-Output $UPN

Add-RdsAppGroupUser -TenantName cagriandMoh10ly -HostPoolName WVD-Host-Pool01 -AppGroupName “Desktop Application Group” -UserPrincipalName $UPN

}

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Refresh the RDWEB Page and see if you can access your host

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The same desktop came back since we are using FSLogix profile container

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VM fails to join Domain during Azure Windows Virtual desktop deployment

Azure Windows Virtual Desktop

WVD or Azure Virtual Desktop has become popular these days during the COVID-19 Virus where everyone started working from home. Companies wanting to adapt to the situation started deploying WVD and so I started to test this feature to keep up with the technology around.

Deployment

I tried using different scenarios during the deployment of Azure WVD, I am going to list them down and explain where did I get my problem exactly.

1- Deploying using Azure Gallery VM.

2- Deploying using a VM Image (This scenario)

3- Deploying using uploaded VM.

My first deployment was using Azure Gallery and in that deployment the machine was deployed without an issue although the domain error has occurred.

In the second Scenario, When you try to use the Github link that has the ARM template

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Error 1

{

“status”: “Failed”,

“error”: {

“code”: “ResourceDeploymentFailure”,

“message”: “The resource operation completed with terminal provisioning state ‘Failed’.”,

“details”: [

            {

“code”: “VMExtensionProvisioningError”,

“message”: “VM has reported a failure when processing extension ‘joindomain’. Error message: \”Exception(s) occured while joining Domain ‘moh10ly.local’\”\r\n\r\nMore information on troubleshooting is available at https://aka.ms/vmextensionwindowstroubleshoot

            }

        ]

    }

}

Error 2

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{“code”:”DeploymentFailed”,”message”:”At least one resource deployment operation failed. Please list deployment operations for details. Please see https://aka.ms/DeployOperations for usage details.”,”details”:[{“code”:”Conflict”,”message”:”{\r\n \”status\”: \”Failed\”,\r\n \”error\”: {\r\n \”code\”: \”ResourceDeploymentFailure\”,\r\n \”message\”: \”The resource operation completed with terminal provisioning state ‘Failed’.\”,\r\n \”details\”: [\r\n {\r\n \”code\”: \”VMExtensionProvisioningError\”,\r\n \”message\”: \”VM has reported a failure when processing extension ‘dscextension’. Error message: \\\”DSC Configuration ‘CreateHostPoolAndRegisterSessionHost’ completed with error(s). Following are the first few: PowerShell DSC resource MSFT_ScriptResource failed to execute Set-TargetResource functionality with error message: User is not authorized to query the management service.\\nActivityId: ef602cd9-7efd-474d-bc70-ccfd340ecb08\\nPowershell commands to diagnose the failure:\\nGet-RdsDiagnosticActivities -ActivityId ef602cd9-7efd-474d-bc70-ccfd340ecb08\\n PowerShell DSC resource MSFT_ScriptResource failed to execute Set-TargetResource functionality with error message: WVD-Host-Pool01 Hostpool does not exist in CagriandMoh10ly Tenant The SendConfigurationApply function did not succeed.\\\”\\r\\n\\r\\nMore information on troubleshooting is available at https://aka.ms/VMExtensionDSCWindowsTroubleshoot \”\r\n }\r\n ]\r\n }\r\n}”}]}

Solution:

Original Setting

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Change To

  1. Domain to join needs to reflect your Active Directory domain not AD Connect Public Domain.
  2. The Credentials must be for a domain user that has the privileges’ to join any PC to the domain

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The Tenant Admin UPN must reflect a user who is allowed to Create a WVD tenant

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After this, In the Tenant Admin UPN or Application ID use one of the Tenant creator account and you’ll get the below result.

Don’t forget to change the Virtual Network’s DNS to point to your DNS Server whether it is on Azure or On-premises network which must have VPN to access if there.

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https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-desktop/tenant-setup-azure-active-directory

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-desktop/troubleshoot-set-up-issues

Deploy Azure Linux and Windows servers in 10 mins via cli

This is a step by step guide about deploying Linux or Windows servers on Azure via CLI.

Why Cli?

Some people prefer using Linux rather than PowerShell and it seems sometimes easier and faster to learn esp if you’re not GUI type of person.

Installation Options

If you’re working on Windows and would like to use CLI, you’ll have two options to install CLI

Option 1

Run Azure CLI installation directly from your Powershell (PowerShell needs to run from a privileged account)

Invoke-WebRequest -Uri https://aka.ms/installazurecliwindows -OutFile .\AzureCLI.msi; Start-Process msiexec.exe -Wait -ArgumentList ‘/I AzureCLI.msi /quiet’

As soon as you run this command, it’ll take about 5 mins or less depending on the connection you have.

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Option 2

Download the MSI file directly from MS’s link and install it on your Computer.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/cli/azure/install-azure-cli-windows?view=azure-cli-latest

Connect to Azure CLI from PowerShell

Run PowerShell or CMD and type the following command to connect

Az Login then hit enter

As soon as you type this, a web page will be launched asking you for your Azure Account credentials so open the session for your Cli window.

The moment you verified your account, PowerShell will list your azure plans that you have / had before.

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If you’re going to use Linux (Ubuntu, Debian) flavor then you’d have to following the following instructions

Manual install instructions

If you don’t want to run a script as superuser or the all-in-one script fails, follow these steps to install the Azure CLI.

  1. Get packages needed for the install process:

    bash

    
    
    sudo apt-get update
    sudo apt-get install ca-certificates curl apt-transport-https lsb-release gnupg
  2. Download and install the Microsoft signing key:

    bash

    
    
    curl -sL https://packages.microsoft.com/keys/microsoft.asc |
        gpg --dearmor |
        sudo tee /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/microsoft.asc.gpg > /dev/null
  3. Add the Azure CLI software repository:

    bash

    
    
    AZ_REPO=$(lsb_release -cs)
    echo "deb [arch=amd64] https://packages.microsoft.com/repos/azure-cli/ $AZ_REPO main" |
        sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/azure-cli.list
  4. Update repository information and install the

    azure-cli

    package:

    bash

    
    
    sudo apt-get update
    sudo apt-get install azure-cli

Run the Azure CLI with the

az

command. To sign in, use the az login command.

  1. Run the

    login

    command.

    Azure CLI

    Try It

    
    
    az login

    If the CLI can open your default browser, it will do so and load an Azure sign-in page.

    Otherwise, open a browser page at https://aka.ms/devicelogin and enter the authorization code displayed in your terminal.

  2. Sign in with your account credentials in the browser.

To learn more about different authentication methods, see Sign in with Azure CLI.

Deploying Linux (CentOS):

Creating a Resource Group for Azure Container Instances (ACI)

We will start first by creating a Resource Group for our Machine, calling it a AzureLinuxServersGroup to easily identify that this group contains our Linux Servers

az group create –name AzureLinuxServersGroup –location westeurope

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Next we will be creating a container to contain the Linux OS on the resource group which we have just created

First, How we know which Image to use and if that will be proper for our deployment?

To answer that, we will use the following command which will view the available latest edition Linux OS with different flavors.

I would like to use CentOS since its identical to RedHat and used by majority of Enterprises.

To list the Images, Enter the following command

az vm image list –output table

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Notice there are many columns, The one which we are going to use in terminal command line is the UrnAlias. It’s important to remember this.

az vm create \

–resource-group AzureLinuxServersGroup \

–name AzureCentOSWP \

–image CentOS \

–admin-username Moh10lyUser \

–generate-ssh-keys

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Since we are using Bash, It’s a case sensitive and it complained about user having capital letters. So we’ll go ahead and use small letters

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After running the command with small letters, it’s telling us where we can find the keys in order for us to reach and get them to use later to login to this newly created machine.

SSH key files ‘/home/moh10ly/.ssh/id_rsa’ and ‘/home/moh10ly/.ssh/id_rsa.pub’ have been generated under ~/.ssh to allow SSH access to the VM. If using machines without permanent storage, back up your keys to a safe location.

The deployment of the machine takes about 3 mins, and it’ll be created with the default minimum resources. Let’s view

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Our machine is ready to be accessed now

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In order for you to get the SSH Keys, you’ll have to have a bit of knowledge

I am going to go the location mentioned previously after creating a machine and copy the keys from the bash screen into a file. Save the file and Import it into SSH client which I will be using (Bitvise in my case).

From the bash screen goto cd /

Cd /home/user/.ssh/

Cat id_rsa hit enter and copy the key and save it into notepad.

Cat id_rsa.pub and copy/save into a notepad as the public key.

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After loading both keys, I was able to successfully login to the Server

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Get a list of Azure VMS

az vm image list

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Let’s List and deploy a WordPress on CentOS

To view the list of available CentOS images, we’ll use the following cli command

az vm image list -f CentOS –all

The image needs to be grabbed from dockerhub URL

cognosys:wordpress-with-centos-77-free:wordpress-with-centos-77-free:1.2019.1008

az container create –resource-group mohazbackupgroup –name mohcontainer –os-type Linux –image cognosys:wordpress-with-centos-77-free:wordpress-with-centos-77-free:1.2019.1008 –dns-name-label azmohlinux –ports 22

Create Windows Server core with IIS

az container create –resource-group mohazbackupgroup –name mohcontainer –os-type windows –image mcr.microsoft.com/windoervercore/centos –dns-name-label azmohlinux –ports 22ws/servercore/iis:nanoserver –dns-name-label azmohiis –ports 80

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Here we go I got a machine ready (took about 5 mins)

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azmohiis.westeurope.azurecontainer.io

To delete the container, you can write the following

az container delete –resource-group mohazbackupgroup –name mohcontainer

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Stay tuned for more articles about Azure.