Microsoft has given Azure Automation users more options for locating Automation accounts in geographic locations, announcing the availability of the service in the Azure UK and West Central US regions with a blog post.
Azure Automation uses Windows PowerShell scripts and workflows, known as runbooks, to handle the creation, deployment, monitoring, and maintenance of Azure resources and third-party applications.
Essentially it’s a way for users of Azure’s government-oriented version of Microsoft’s cloud to automate the error-prone, frequently repeated tasks that are performed in a cloud and enterprise environment.
Azure Automation saves time and increases the reliability of tasks, even scheduling them to be performed automatically.
Here is a video from Microsoft Ignite session in May 2015 that will help you understand how Azure Automation works and guide you through the process of using it.
Consecutive upgrades
Azure Automation has received its first major boost just one month after its introduction to Microsoft’s Azure Government. Microsoft recently added the service to its government-oriented version of the Azure cloud.
Back in December 2016 Microsoft said in a blog post that the total number of FedRAMP High baseline services is now at 26. As a comparison, cloud rival Amazon Web Service GovCloud has 20 FedRAMP certified services.
Here is the list of the new services recently added to Azure Government:
- “Azure Resource Manager – Azure Resource Manager (ARM) enables you to repeatedly deploy your app and have confidence your resources are deployed in a consistent state.
- Automation – Azure Automation uses Windows PowerShell scripts and workflows – known as runbooks – to handle the creation, deployment, monitoring, and maintenance of Azure resources and third-party applications.
- Azure Batch – Azure Batch makes it easy to run large-scale parallel and high-performance computing (HPC) workloads in Azure.
- Log Analytics – Log Analytics is a service in Operations Management Suite that helps you collect and analyze data generated by resources in your cloud and on-premises environments.
- Azure Media Services – Azure Media Services offers broadcast-quality video streaming services to reach larger audiences on today’s most popular mobile devices.
- Policy Administration Service/RBAC – Azure Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) enables fine-grained access management for Azure. Using RBAC, you can grant only the amount of access that users need to perform their jobs.
- Redis Cache – Redis Cache gives you access to a secure, dedicated cache for your Azure application usage. It leverages the low-latency, high-throughput capabilities of the Redis engine.
- Scheduler – Azure Scheduler lets you invoke actions that call HTTP/S endpoints or post messages to a storage queue on any schedule.”
