Managing Azure without a laptop from the beach!

Brian Benz
Sep 6, 2018 · 2 min read

I recently went on vacation, and while I was out there was a security issue with the version of Linux I was running on a few of my many Linux demo VMs on Azure. Of course, Azure was on top of it and notified me that of the vulnerable virtual machines.

This was the first time I’ve not taken my laptop on vacation for a very long time. But I did have the Azure app for iPhone!

While we waited for lunch near the beach, I logged in to check out the issue — Sure enough, several of my VMs were running the vulnerable version of Linux. I could have patched them at this point, but what if they had already been compromised? Plus I’m on vacation. The quickest thing to do was to simply delete the VMs and rebuild them when I get back to the office.

All of the affected VMs were in a few Azure resource groups, so instead of deleting them one by one, the easiest thing to do was to fire up the Azure Cloud Shell in the Azure iPhone App, and use the az group delete command to delete the VMs and all related Azure services. The whole thing took a few minutes and I was back to my vacation!

In case you’re wondering, Lunch was carnitas at Picante Martin’s, in Newport Beach, California. Highly recommended!

Brian Benz

Written by

Cloud advocate for @Microsoft @Azure

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