by Azure automation consists of the following:
Process automation
Allows you to automate frequent and time consuming tasks. It allows you to create ‘runbooks‘ to run automation jobs.
Configuration management
Use to track VM and infrastructure changes. This can help you diagnose unwanted changes and raise alerts.
Track changes in:
- Services
- Daemons
- Software
- Registry
- Files
Azure automation state configuration
This is a cloud based feature for PowerShell desired state configuration (DSC). It can help you manage your DSC resources in Azure automation and apply configurations to virtual and physical machines.
Shared resources
Azure automation consists of a set of shared resources to make it easier to automate and configure your environments. These are:
- Schedules – Trigger automation jobs at specific times
- Module – import DSC resources and third party cmdlets
- Modules gallery – integrate PowerShell Gallery to view and import runbooks into the automation account
- Python 2 packages – Use python 2 runbooks
- Credentials – Secure storage of credentials that are used by runbooks at runtime
- Connections – Store resource connection information for use in runbooks
- Certificates
- Global variables
Examples of automation jobs:
- Write runbooks
- Build and deploy resources
- Configure VMs
- Retrieve inventory information
- Monitor resources
