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SQL RP

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Fixing the SQL / MySQL RP update procedure on Azure Stack Hub 1910

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Anyone who has been running and operating Azure Stack Hub for a while is hopefully aware that there are a number of activities that need to take place to keep it up to date and supported. The most obvious one is updating the core infrastructure using the integrated update process. It’s made easier in that the main dashboard on the admin portal for your stamp informs you of the update status - if it’s up to date or if there’s an update to apply. When it comes to additional Resource Providers, you have to do the work your self. This post details how to fix the update process for the SQL and MySQL RP’s for systems running version 1910.

I’m making the assumption that you have already deployed the RP’s previously, and have access to the pfx file that contains the sqladapter certificate for your stamp.

Version 1910 of Azure Stack Hub requires version 1.1.47.0 of the SQL & MySQL Resource Providers.

The first thing you will need to do is download the respective RP install binaries:

Extract the contents of the downloaded file(s) on a system that has access to the PEP and also has the compatible Azure Stack Hub PowerShell modules installed for Azure Satck Hub 1910: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure-stack/operator/azure-stack-powershell-install?view=azs-1910

Create a directory in the location where you extracted the RP files called cert.  You will need to copy the pfx file containing the certificate for the SQL adapter into this directory. This step is the same for both SQL and MySQL.

We need to modify the common.psm1 file in the Prerequisites folder, similar to an earlier blog post on deploying the RP (based on 1.1.33.0)

Taking a look at the file shows us the prerequisites for the function:

It expects the Azure RM module version to be 2.3.0 and that the installation path for the modules to be \SqlMyslPsh.
If following the official instructions for deploying the Azure Stack PowerShell module compatible with 1910, this will never work, so we need to modify the Test-AzureStackPowerShell function.

Change the $AzPshInstallFolder on line 82 from "SqlMySqlPsh" to "WindowsPowerShell\Modules"

Change the $AzureRmVersion on line 84 from "2.3.0" to "5.8.3"

We need some further changes to the function to ensure that the correct path for the module is evaluated:

Locate line 118/119 in the module.

We need to modify the path so it reflects that of the loaded module.  Change the "AzureRM" to AzureRM.Profile", as highlighted in the images below.

N.B. - The instructions for the fix are also applicable for new SQL & MySQL Resource Provider deployments, as they use the common.psm1 module too.

Save the file and using the update script example tailored to your environment, the update should now work.

You should see status messages like below:

Overall, it takes approximately 50 minutes to run through the update.


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Deploying the SQL RP with the latest Azure Stack PowerShell module

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This is a quick post about how you can use the latest Azure Stack PowerShell module to deploy the SQL resource provider to Azure Stack (1908) , rather than having to use an older version that the RP documentation says you must do (which can be messy, having to remove / install various modules).

If you follow the pre-requisites, you require PowerShell for Azure Stack. Following the link in the pre-reqs gives you the instructions to install the latest version (1.7.2 at time of writing). I followed the instructions for version 1904 and later and that was great.

Further into the SQL RP document, there is a helper script to help you with the deployment. The script states that the modules required are for specific versions, which are outdated for 1908. This actually conflicts with the pre-requirement, as the link is to install version 1.7.2 of the AzureStack Module. I don’t particularly want o remove/install different version of Modules to my system as it is time consuming and unnecessary, IMO. Anyway, I decided to carry on as it may have been an oversight.

Next, I had download version 1.1.33.0 of the SQL RP

I ran the self-extracting exe file and from the extracted directory, I ran from and elevated PowerShell session the DeploySQLProvider.ps1 script

Even though I had followed all the pre-reqs in the article, an exception was thrown as seen below:

As you can see, it is complaining about the Azure Stack PowerShell module. I know that version 2.5.0 and ArmProfile 2019-03-01-hybrid is supported with Azure Stack 1908, so I took a look at the script to find out what was throwing this error.

I did a search for ‘Checking for Azure Stack Powershell Module …’ and it took me to the following :

It looked like the Test-AzureStackPowershell function was the candidate. The function wasn’t defined within the script, so it must have come from some other module. I ran the following commands to get the information I needed:

get-command Test-AzureStackPowerShell

get-module Common | ft Path

You can see the output here; the source of the function was the key to find where it resided:

Now I went and took a look at the Common.psm1 module.

I did a search for a distinct part of the error message that’s thrown - ‘Use ArmProfile 2018-03-01-hybrid’ and it took me to this:

I could see in the elseif statement that it was looking for a minor version equal to 3. Given that I’m running 2.5.0, that was never going to work. So to try and resolve the error, I changed the ‘-eq’ to ‘-ge’, so that it would work for any minor version greater or equal to 3 and above.

I removed the currently loaded Common module:

Remove-Module Common

Then I ran the DeploySQLProvider.ps1 script again:

Bingo! Fixed it. As you can see, it evaluates version 2.5.0 as supported and carries on until the deployment completes successfully…

sqlrp-10.png

So it turns out a simple change in the Common module has made life a lot more straightforward.