Connecting Azure Automation
To enable RealmJoin Portal to offer runbooks as a way to automate daily operations, you need to connect an Azure Automation Account. This Automation Account will host your runbooks as well as the permissions needed for the runbooks to function in your environment.
This guide will help you to onboard either a new or existing Automation Account.
Please be aware, the Automation Account (its Managed Identity, to be more precise) will potentially have far reaching permissions in your environment, like the ability to modify group- or user-objects in AzureAD or mailboxes in Exchange Online. Please carefully limit the number of people with access to this Automation Account to prevent unwanted usage of the given permissions.
When reusing an existing Automation Account, be aware that RealmJoin Portal automates the creation, updating and removal of runbooks coming from the shared online repository of runbooks. This might not be adequate for an existing Automation Account. If in doubt, it is recommended to create a dedicated Azure Automation Account for RealmJoin Runbooks.
An Azure Subscription is needed to host your Automation Account. It is recommended to choose a subscription where only dedicated administrators will have access.
Please note down the Subscription Id as it will be needed later.
Choose or create an Azure Resource Group in your Azure Subscription, e.g.
rjrb-automation.
Create an Azure Resource Group
Please note down the Resource Group's name as it will be needed later.
Create an Azure Automation Account in the given Resource Group. In this example we will use the name
c4a8toydariaazacc01 for the Automation Account. It will host your shared and private runbooks.Please note down the Automation Account's name as it will be needed later.
Automation Account Connection in RealmJoin Portal
Please fill in the AzureAD Tenant Id, Subscription Id and Resource Group name.
You can review your AzureAD Tenant Id at https://portal.azure.com/#blade/Microsoft_AAD_IAM/ActiveDirectoryMenuBlade/Overview
RealmJoin Portal will create two lines of AZ CLI Code beneath
ResourceGroup. Example (with anonymized example values):az provider register --namespace Microsoft.Automation
az ad sp create-for-rbac -n "RealmJoin Runbook Management" --role contributor --scopes /subscriptions/12345678-1234-1234-1234-123456789abc/resourceGroups/rjrb-automation-01
Executing those lines will create an App Registration (Service Principal) in AzureAD that can interact with the your Automation Account. This is needed, so that RealmJoin can
- Create, List and Update Runbooks
- Start Runbooks
- Display Jobs and Output
Please execute these two lines of code using AZ CLI with an administrative account that can create App Registrations and also grant contributor permissions on the chosen Resource Group.
Tipp: You can use Azure CloudShell, so you don't need to install and authenticate a local copy of AZ CLI.
Azure CloudShell - Create the App Registration
The command will return multiple values. Please note down the values for
appId and password.You can review the resulting App Registration in AzureAD. It will be named "RealmJoin Runbook Management".
App Regsitrations in Azure Portal
Choose the Branch of the shared runbook repository you want to follow, wether
master or production. If unsure, please choose production as master will have more bleeding edge / preview runbooks in a less tested state.
Automation Account Connection in RealmJoin Portal
Press "Save" to start the initial import of runbooks. Please leave this window open until you see the message "Sync completed".
Please continue with Azure AD Roles and Permissions in Process Automation to allow your runbooks to interact with objects in your environment.
Last modified 1mo ago