It has been a while since I had the opportunity to blog. It has been a very busy period which is good in some ways …

Anyway, today I wanted to pick up on Azure CSE. Azure CSE is beneficial in many ways when it comes to configuring VM’s, installing application and making app configuration changes.

Normally, when running an Azure CSE for Windows, people do favour Powershell scripts which gives them the power (in the name) and functionality to do their configuration elements with ease.

The recent issue I faced with Powershell scripts are particularly around Invoke-Command which runs a script block inside the VM under VM System context. Those Invoke-Command statements were issued to install a sequence of applications and configure the app in a certain way.

My word of advice is to avoid using Invoke-Command and use Start-Process instead.

For example:

Invoke-Command -ScriptBlock { “C:\Temp\Setup.exe /q”}

You would think this would go and install that Setup.exe program, but it many cases it doesn’t and you find there is a missing element in your application sequence.

A better and more effective way of doing this is:

Start-Process “C:\Temp\Setup.exe” -ArgumentList “/q” -Wait

This would ensure running of the Setup.exe installer and waiting for finish flag before it continues with the rest of your Azure CSE script, which the Invoke-Command doesn’t offer.

Simple things like that would make you script neater especially in managing error/failure codes during the install of the application.

To be honest, I would prefer the DSC way if you have the time and knowledge.