How to get started with Visual Studio Team Services

In this post we’re going to explore how to get a full enterprise-grade development platform for free in 4 steps. Microsoft is offering for free the same environment that all of its sw engineers use every day to us.

Azure PowerShell Start Virtual Machine

This is the script I use to start virtual machines in our cloud environment. I write it down here for archive and sharing purposes.

It is based on the Azure RunAs automation account.

The only thing thing you need to do is to schedule this script daily.

<#
    .DESCRIPTION
        Turns of virtual machines only office days.

    .NOTES
        AUTHOR: Michele Ferracin
#>


# No Sunday, no Saturday.
$wd = (Get-Date).DayOfWeek

if ($wd -eq "Sunday" -or $wd -eq "Saturday") {
 exit 0;
}

$connectionName = "AzureRunAsConnection"
try
{
    # Get the connection "AzureRunAsConnection "
    $servicePrincipalConnection=Get-AutomationConnection -Name $connectionName        

    "Logging in to Azure..."
    Add-AzureRmAccount `
        -ServicePrincipal `
        -TenantId $servicePrincipalConnection.TenantId `
        -ApplicationId $servicePrincipalConnection.ApplicationId `
        -CertificateThumbprint $servicePrincipalConnection.CertificateThumbprint 
}
catch {
    if (!$servicePrincipalConnection)
    {
        $ErrorMessage = "Connection $connectionName not found."
        throw $ErrorMessage
    } else{
        Write-Error -Message $_.Exception
        throw $_.Exception
    }
}

Start-AzureRmVM -Name "YourVM1" -ResourceGroupName "YourResourceGroup"

Start-AzureRmVM -Name "YourVM2" -ResourceGroupName "YourResourceGroup"