Mount Azure Blob Storage into Windows Machine

 

Azure Blob Storage is an object storage solution for the cloud. Blob Storage allows you to store a massive amount of unstructured data, however initially there wasn't an option to mount the blob container directly into windows/Linux operating systems.

Storage explorer, azcopy and SDKs are used in-order to manage files and folders in blob containers from windows/Linux workstations.

Now Microsoft launched in public preview NFS 3.0 support for Azure Blob storage which helps us to mount the blob containers into windows/Linux machines.

Today we'll briefly go thorough the steps to be followed in-order to mount a azure blob container into windows machine.

Before following this article to mount a blob container ensure that you have a valid subscription and storage account with a blob container.

To mount a storage account container, you'll have to do these things.

1. Register NFS 3.0 protocol feature with your subscription.

1. Verify that the feature is registered.

2. Create an Azure Virtual Network (VNet).

3. Configure network security.

4. Create and configure a storage account that accepts traffic only from the VNet.

5. Create a container in the storage account.

6. Mount the container.

1. Register NFS 3.0 protocol feature with your subscription.

Since NFS 3.0 is in public preview in-order to use this feature you will need to manually register it into your subscription.

Below are the power-shell commands to register and activate NFS 3.0 in your subscription, I'm using azure cloud-shell as it has all the necessary power-shell modules required for Azure.

Connect-AzAccount (Not required if you are using cloudshell)

If your account is associated more than one subscription, identify and set the active subscription

$context = Get-AzSubscription -SubscriptionId <subscription-id>

Set-AzContext $context

Register the AllowNFSV3 feature by using the following command.

Register-AzProviderFeature -FeatureName AllowNFSV3 -ProviderNamespace Microsoft.Storage

Register the PremiumHns feature by using the following command as well.

Register-AzProviderFeature -FeatureName PremiumHns -ProviderNamespace Microsoft.Storage

HNS - The hierarchical namespace allows you to define ACL and POSIX permissions on directories, subdirectories or individual files. You can also use role-based authentication and Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) to support resource management and data operations

Register the resource provider by using the following command.

Register-AzResourceProvider -ProviderNamespace Microsoft.Storage

It will take around 1 hour to complete registration process, you can run below commands to verify the status of registration.

Get-AzProviderFeature -ProviderNamespace Microsoft.Storage -FeatureName AllowNFSV3

Get-AzProviderFeature -ProviderNamespace Microsoft.Storage -FeatureName PremiumHns

2.Create a storage account

Supported region : US East, US Central, US West Central, Australia Southeast, North Europe, UK West, Korea Central, Korea South, and Canada Central

NFS 3.0 supported only in below account kind; General purpose v1,v2 and blobstorage are not supported at the moment.

Performance tier : Premium

Account kind : Block blob storage

Virtual Network and Security requirements

At the moment in-order to secure data account key authorization, Azure Active Directory (AD) security, and access control lists (ACLs) are not yet supported in accounts that have the NFS 3.0 protocol support enabled on them. 

So only way to support this kind of storage account is by placing them into a subnet in a VNET and enable restrictions with the help of NSG, virtual machines from same VNET/subnet can access the blob containers created in the storage account.

Also you can enable VNET peering with other VNETS to get the blob containers accessed from other networks in azure, blob containers can be mounted to the machines in on-prem infrastructure in case if you have VPN/Express route connection via virtual network gateway into the VNET where storage account is contained.

Network security recommendations for blob storage - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/storage/blobs/security-recommendations#networking

Note: NFS 3.0 feature cannot be enabled unless the storage account is placed into a VNET and subnet.

On advanced tab you must enable the HNS and NFS 3.0. If it is greyed out check the NFS 3.0 registration status and ensure that the storage account is placed into a VNET/Subnet.

Verify the below before submitting the settings for storage account creation, once it is deployed the account kind and related configurations cannot be reverted.

3. Create Blob container

Once the storage account is successfully provisioned, navigate to Data Lake storage --> select containers and click on +container to create a blob container 

Ensure that the access level is set to private anonymous 

4. Setup NFS 3.0 client on windows machines

In-order to mount a blob container into windows machine using NFS 3.0 you must install NFS 3.0 client into the windows machines.

Windows Servers

Open server manager --> Add roles and features --> select "Client for NFS" from feature tab and complete the installation and reboot the machine.

Windows 10 workstations

Open control panel --> add or remove programs --> Turn Windows features on or off --> select "client for NFS" check box from under the "Service for NFS" --> complete the installation and reboot the machine.

5. Mount the blob container 

The blob container can be mounted into the server(W2K16)/workstation(windows 10) by entering below command from a administrative command prompt.

mount -o nolock <storage-account-name>.blob.core.windows.net:/<storage-account-name>/<container-name> *

Storage-account-name - replace with your storage account name

Container-name - replace with your container name

6. Write permission issue with mounted container

At this stage the mounted container blob will not have write permission, lets check it by creating a new file into it.

If you need write permissions, you may need to change the default UID and GID that Windows uses to connect to the share. To do this, run the following PowerShell commands as an administrator from the windows machine:

New-ItemProperty -Path HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\ClientForNFS\CurrentVersion\Default -Name AnonymousUid -PropertyType DWord -Value 0

New-ItemProperty -Path HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\ClientForNFS\CurrentVersion\Default -Name AnonymousGid -PropertyType DWord -Value 0

Lets now check the write access into the blob container mounted into a windows machine

Check out whether the file created is showing up in the container blob on Azure portal.

Note: We can expect new features such as Azure AD RBAC, ACL and account key in-order to secure the mounted blob containers also many of the configurations may change once the it is released to general; so always refer Microsoft documentations to get latest updates.

Reference : 

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/storage/blobs/network-file-system-protocol-support

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/storage/blobs/network-file-system-protocol-support-how-to?tabs=windows

Guys kindly check it out and get familiar with the concepts of container blob mounting, the above link to Microsoft documentation will help you understand about mounting of blobs containers into Linux operating systems as well.

Thanks for reading 👍

HP Pro-curve/Aruba Switch Firmware Upgrade Automation

 

HP Pro-curve/Aruba Switch Firmware Upgrade Automation.

If you haven't gone through the best practices to be followed for upgrading network switch firmware, please refer the below article.

https://sjohnonline.blogspot.com/2019/05/network-switch-firmware-upgrade-best.html

Firmware upgrade on 1 or 2 switches are fine however what about upgrading 100 switches with short deadline ?

If there are more number of network switches, usually paid software's are used for managing/administering them, Aruba central is one of the cloud console solution of HP/Aruba for their switches.

In case you don't have a paid software for HP/Aruba, don't worry 😊 today we're going to discuss about automating the HP Pro-curve/Aruba switch firmware upgrade.

Here we are going to use the new module introduced in windows PowerShell (WMF 5.0 or later) “Posh-SSH module”, which is loaded with SSH commands to access and execute commands on the network devices.

Script is developed based on the assumption that the "Primary" flash is the active flash in your switch.

If your switch is running on secondary flash (which is active flash) then the script commands need to be amended with secondary instead of primary vice versa.

Pre-requisites  

  ü  Windows PowerShell version 5.0 or above

Open an administrative PowerShell and execute the below command to check your PowerShell version.

If it is below 5.0, update your PowerShell Version first.

Reference : https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/wmf/5.1/install-configure

 ü  Posh-SSH module should be installed on windows PowerShell

Open an administrative PowerShell and execute the below command

Reference: https://www.powershellgallery.com/packages/Posh-SSH/2.0.2

 ü  Install and configure a TFTP Server (Refer Step 2)

 ü  SSH should be enabled on all network devices

 ü  All devices should be configured with same login credentials (Read only)

 ü  After logging in, the devices should be in "Enable" (Privileged #) mode

 ü  Network devices firmware should be in-line with industry standards

 ü  Add IP address of devices into hp.txt in the “content” folder.

 ü  Not recommended to run on any servers installed with SCCM, WDS or any other tftp services.

 ü  Login credential need to be encrypted and saved in a text file Pass.txt. Copy the pass.txt file into the script “content” folder.

How to Convert

Open Administrative PowerShell window and execute the command below.

"Temp123*" | ConvertTo-SecureString -AsPlainText -Force | ConvertFrom-SecureString | Out-File "C:\pass.txt”.

Password – Temp123*

Output File – pass.txt in C drive

Note: In case if your password contains special characters like "$" make sure you input the password in below format. Otherwise while encrypting the password get altered.

Example:

Temp123$upp0rt

"Temp123"+"$"+upp0rt

How to use the script

1)  Download the script “Network_switch_auto_backup.ps1” from the GitHub repository and extract it into any drive.

https://github.com/Sijoejohn/HP-Aruba-switch-firmware-upgrade-auto.git  

 2)      Open tftpd64 folder under script root folder and run tftpd64.exe, note down the IP address and edit the following settings. It is a one-time job.

      

       2a)  Open Tftpd64 program, click on Settings button.

2b) Settings window will open as shown below. Put a check mark only to TFTP Server option. Remove check mark from all other options

2c) then next select TFTP tab. click on Browse button to specify Base Directory. You need to specify the Base Directory of the TFTP Server. Set your script root folder as the base directory.

Ex: H:\Network_switch_auto_backup

Where H = your disk drive where the script folder is extracted to. Network_switch_auto_backup is the script root folder.

2d) Under TFTP Security, select the option None

2e) A very important Step, Bind TFTP to this address: To set the IP address for TFTP server, please select the option Bind TFTP to this address then select the IP address available for you. You may get a different IP address, please use the IP address available in the drop down window.

You have to note down bonded IP address and write into the script line as mentioned in Step 3.

2f) once you have performed all the above steps, Click on OK. Now you will receive a window asking to restart Tftpd64 to apply the new settings. Click on OK.

2e) Reopen Tftpd64 program. Just ensure that you selected same IP address for Server Interface.              

Reference: http://techzain.com/how-to-setup-tftp-server-tftpd64-tfptd32-windows/

3)      Download the new firmware flash and copy it into script root folder

Note: If it is not worked copy it to tftpd64 folder

4)      Edit the following portion in the script

 If user name to login to your device is not "manager”, change it to your user name.

$cred=New-ObjectSystem.Management.Automation.PSCredential ('manager',$securePassword)

Enter your TFTP server IP address (Bonded TFTP Server IP address – Step 2e)

$tftp_server="Enter your TFTP server ip address here" 

Enter the name of firmware flash 

$FlashVersion = "Example : WB_16_10_0003.swi"

5)      Open script root folder and navigate to “Content folder”

  Replace pass.txt with your encrypted device password key file

 Enter the IP address of HP devices into hp.txt

5)      Open a PowerShell (Administrative PS recommended) 

6)      Navigate and set path to script root folder

7)      If you want to backup HP devices configuration execute the below command

PS>.\Network_switch_auto_backup.ps1 HP

8) SSH session will be disconnected once the firmware is updated on primary flash

9) Once switch is online , login and verify the Firmware.

10) Ensure that there are no errors on the logs after the Firmware upgrade.

Warning

Use at your own risk as there are many other dependencies based on your switch model and configuration that can break the network switch during Firmware upgrade.

Go through the best practices as mentioned in the below article and additionally take a backup of flash as well even-though we're keeping a secondary flash with duplicated configuration config2

https://sjohnonline.blogspot.com/2019/05/network-switch-firmware-upgrade-best.html

Always test the script on a test/non-critical network switch before going for wide range of upgrades.

After sanity test optionally primary flash can be copied to secondary flash.

Troubleshooting

1)  Logging is enabled on the script with run time, date and year, check the folder “logs”

Future Enhancements

1)  Expand functionality for larger pool of network devices.

2)  Include the functionality for staged firmware upgrade (Firmware1 --> Firmware2 -->Firmware3)

Devices Tested

1) HP Switches (Procurve and Aruba)

2920-48G-POE+

2910al-48G-POE+

2920-24G-POE

2530-48G-PoEP

Tested Firmware versions

WB.16.01.0004 --> WB.16.05.0003 --> WB.16.10.0003

Hope this information is valuable for you and thanks for reading.

Happy Automation ✌