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Cloud-Aware - Personal IT Blog

I write about Azure Cloud and cloud native solutions. Here you will find posts about tools such as Vagrant, Ansible, Terraform, Bicep, PowerShell, Hyper-V, Docker and Kubernetes as well as posts and tutorials related to Microsoft Azure cloud.

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Hardening Windows Virtual Machine with Azure State Configuration (DSC)

on September 09, 2022

Automation Account Azure CIS DISA DSC PowerShell STIG

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Fixing non-bootable Azure Virtual Machine

on August 24, 2022

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Home Lab with Vagrant and Hyper-V

on August 13, 2022

Hyper-V PowerShell Vagrant

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Maciej

Popular Posts

Fixing non-bootable Azure Virtual Machine

Sometimes the Virtual Machine breaks down and can't be restored from the backup. It can occur both if there is no backup and if the backup didn't work for some reason. Fixing non-bootable VM can be complicated and time-consuming task. In this post I will describe how to fix non-booting VM using az cli commands. First thing you should consider when creating any new Azure VM (it can be enabled for existing VMs too) is Boot Diagnostics. The Boot Diagnostics gives the ability to see your VM status on the screenshot in Azure Portal. Based on that, one can see what kind of error prevented the VM from working normally (More about Boot Diagnostic can be read on official Microsoft Page: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/boot-diagnostics ). Once discovered the root-cause of an issue one can start working on remediating it. Microsoft provides us a command, which can help remediate the non-booting Virtual Machine. Below I will describe two ways of fixing your VM using...

Home Lab with Vagrant and Hyper-V

Vagrant is a great tool for quickly spinning new environments. First time I’ve used Vagrant was when I was learning Ansible and needed something, which would help me quickly create new Virtual Machines with some basic config. The best mix is Vagrant paired with VirtualBox, that combo really works great and from my experience it’s a way to go. Unfortunately when You need WSL2 or Docker Desktop things get really complicated. VirtualBox VMs are getting really slow, sometimes they don’t even boot or You are just simple blocked from create any. I know that new version of VirtualBox tends to fix that and there are some older version, which could still work fine but from my experience it’s a constant struggle. That’s when Hyper-V comes throughout the shadows. It’s not as great as VirtualBox when paired with Vagrant but it can do the job even with it’s limitation. Below I’ll share my experience with Vagrant and Hyper-V and will show You how I’ve managed to bypass some of it’s limitation for my...

Hardening Windows Virtual Machine with Azure State Configuration (DSC)

Getting your OS secured is one of the most crucial task nowadays. But how to know which settings needs to be configured and how? Those questions can be answered by Security Baselines. At the moment two most popular system configuration baselines are CIS ( https://www.cisecurity.org/ ) and DISA STIG ( https://public.cyber.mil/stigs ). Here You can find great comparison between the two: https://nira.com/stig-vs-cis/ . Main advantage that DISA STIG have when compared to CIS is fact that DISA provides you already pre-created GPOs ( https://public.cyber.mil/stigs/gpo/ ) for free when CIS for free gives only PDF benchmarks with all recommendations. Of course you can always review CIS benchmark and create your own GPO but in our case having one already created is a time saver. Keep in mind that all security baselines before applying needs to be reviewed, so they don't impact your OS functionality. First you need to download or create your GPO. As said before in this exampl...

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