Deployment script for Microsoft Azure - Managed Disks

Deploying N-able N-central to Azure with Managed Disks is simplified by using a Deployment PowerShell script. You can download the script from here.

The deployment script requires PowerShell 7.0 or higher. PowerShell 7 is a cross platform version of PowerShell (Formerly called PowerShell Core) that has installers for Windows, MacOS and Linux. You can download the latest version of PowerShell on GitHub.

The script is pre-populated with the version of N-able N-central you downloaded it for. If you want to install a different version, replace this value with the full Version number. The version is on the N-central Download Page for the version you want to deploy.

Note that Azure Managed Disks are only supported for N-able N-central 2020.2 and higher releases.

For more information on the installation process, see Install N-able N-central on Microsoft Azure Managed Disks.

Azure information

You can retrieve your Azure subscription ID from the Subscriptions Blade in the Azure Portal.

https://portal.azure.com/#blade/Microsoft_Azure_Billing/SubscriptionsBlade

Azure Region

Select the Azure region, for example, eastus where N-able N-central will be located. Not all features are available in all regions. Check with Microsoft Azure for availability. You can get all the Azure locations using the Azure PowerShell command:

Get-AzLocation

Resource naming prefix

The script is designed to use a naming prefix for naming all resources it creates. With the default script configuration, keep this value between 1 - 18 characters, excluding any symbols to avoid exceeding other resource name length limits.

For more information, see Develop your naming and tagging strategy for Azure resources.

VM size

You will need to define the size of the N-able N-central, Azure, Generation 2, VM Instance, for example, 'Standard_DS3_v2'. You can get all the VM sizes in the US East region using the Azure PowerShell command. Use the region where you plan to install N-able N-central:

Get-AzVMSize -Location 'eastus'

For more information, see Support for generation 2 VMs on Azure.

Operating system disk size

You will need to define the size of the new OS Managed Disk in GB. It should be greater than 80GB. For more information, see What disk types are available in Azure?

Operating system disk storage type

Select the storage type for the Operating System Managed Disk. The valid options are:

• Premium_LRS,
• StandardSSD_LRS, and
• Standard_LRS.

Azure does not support using the UltraSSD_LRS storage type for Operating System Disks. For more information, see

• What disk types are available in Azure?
• Azure Storage redundancy

Data disks sizes

You will need to set the size of the new Data Managed Disks in GB (each). All the Data Disks will be combined into a software RAID to take advantage of parallel disk writes, spreading the IOPs load across the total number of disks you select.

Number of data disks

Define the number of Data Managed Disks in the Software RAID array. This value can be between 1 - 99, but the maximum number of Data Disks is defined by the Azure VM Size.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/linux/generation-2#generation-2-vm-sizes

Data disks storage type

Select the storage type for the Data Managed Disk. The valid options are:

• Premium_LRS,
• StandardSSD_LRS, and
• Standard_LRS.

UltraSSD_LRS is unsupported at this time but is planned to be added once the Azure PowerShell Modules provide better deployment support.

For more information, see

• What disk types are available in Azure?
• Azure Storage redundancy

Boot diagnostics storage account

Select the storage type for the Boot Diagnostics Storage Account. The valid options are:

• Premium_LRS,
• StandardSSD_LRS, and
• Standard_LRS.

This storage account is used for the Azure VM boot diagnostic logs. It is also used during deployment to temporarily host the VHD image before it is imported to a Managed Disk. This is a seldom used storage account, so it does not have to be on the fasted storage types.

Boot diagnostics storage account type

Select the type of boot storage account you want to use for the VM Boot Diagnostics storage. N-able N-central requires either Storage or StorageV2.

• Storage: General purpose Storage account that supports storage of Blobs, Tables, Queues, Files and Disks.
• StorageV2: General Purpose Version 2 (GPv2) Storage account that supports Blobs, Tables, Queues, Files, and Disks, with advanced features like data tiering.

Accelerated networking

TheN-able N-central image for Azure Managed Disks has been configured to support Accelerated Networking, if desired. For more information, see Create a Linux virtual machine with Accelerated Networking using Azure CLI.

IPv6 Support

N-able N-central does not yet support IPv6 for monitoring, however the underlying operating system and services are ready to support it in the future. To future proof your deployment, you can configure the Azure deployment with IPv6 support.

Before you deploy a dual stack application in Azure, you must configure your subscription for this preview feature using the following Azure PowerShell commands:

Register-AzProviderFeature -FeatureName AllowIPv6VirtualNetwork -ProviderNamespace Microsoft.Network

It takes up to 30 minutes for feature registration to complete. You can check your registration status by running the following Azure PowerShell command:

Get-AzProviderFeature -FeatureName AllowIPv6VirtualNetwork -ProviderNamespace Microsoft.Network

After the registration is complete, run the following command:

Register-AzResourceProvider -ProviderNamespace Microsoft.Network

You can generate a random Private IPv6 Network Prefix by going to https://simpledns.com/private-ipv6.

N-central sizing on Azure Managed Disk deployment