Discover virtual machine instances on Azure

This document describes the steps to run an inventory discovery on your Azure account by using the Migration Center discovery client CLI.

The mcdc CLI lets you collect information about your Azure virtual machine (VM) instances. The mcdc CLI then sends this information to Migration Center, where you can continue with your assessment.

Before you begin

  1. Review the requirements for downloading and running the mcdc CLI.
  2. Complete the steps to download the mcdc CLI. Migration Center doesn't support Azure PowerShell; use Azure CLI to run the mcdc CLI commands.

Authenticate to Azure

To allow the mcdc CLI to access your Azure environment, you need to configure the access using one of the following methods:

Use your existing Azure credentials

To use your existing Azure credentials, run the mcdc CLI commands directly from the Azure Cloud Shell. If you run the mcdc CLI from the Azure Cloud Shell, you can use your existing credentials without a client secret. In this case, the mcdc CLI can access your Azure environment to discover VM instances, as granted by your credentials.

Create a client secret for the mcdc CLI

To allow the mcdc CLI access Azure resources, register the mcdc CLI as an application in your Azure account and create a client secret.

To create a client secret for the mcdc CLI, follow these steps:

  1. In the Azure portal, go to the App Registration page, and click New registration.
  2. To add new client credentials, click Add a certificate or secret.
  3. To add a new client secret, click + New client secret and enter a description and expiry date for the client secret.
  4. Click Add.

Your client secret is now ready to use. Copy the client secret value because you need it later when you run the mcdc CLI commands.

Create a custom role

To make sure that the mcdc CLI has the necessary permissions to access your Azure resources, you need to create a custom role with the required permissions.

To create a custom role, follow these steps:

  1. In the Azure portal, go to the Subscriptions page and select your Azure subscription.
  2. Copy the Subscription ID by clicking it.

  3. Save the following JSON template and replace SUBSCRIPTION_ID with the Subscription ID you copied in Step 2:

      {
  "properties": {
        "roleName": "Minimum permissions role",
        "description": "This role contains the bare minimum of Azure IAM permissions",
        "assignableScopes": [
              "/subscriptions/SUBSCRIPTION_ID"
        ],
  "permissions": [
              {
              "actions": [
                "Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachines/read",
                "Microsoft.Compute/disks/read",
                "Microsoft.Insights/MetricDefinitions/read",
                "Microsoft.Insights/Metrics/Read",
                "Microsoft.Network/networkInterfaces/read"
              ],
              "notActions": [],
              "dataActions": [],
              "notDataActions": []
              }
        ]
  }
  }

    For more information about the permission details, see permission details.

  4. In the Azure portal, go to the Access control (IAM) page.

  5. To add a custom role, click + Add.

  6. Click Start from JSON and then click Select file to upload the JSON file you created in Step 3.

  7. To review your inputs click Review + Create, and then to create the custom role click Create.

Assign the custom role to the mcdc CLI

After you create the custom role, you need to assign it to the mcdc CLI application to grant it the necessary permissions.

To assign a custom role to the mcdc CLI, follow these steps:

  1. In the Azure portal, go to the Access control (IAM) page.
  2. Click + Add and then click Add role assignment.
  3. In the custom role that you created (Create a custom role), enter m2vm and select the role.
  4. Click Next.
  5. Click + Select members and search for the mcdc CLI that you registered in Register the mcdc CLI and click Select.
  6. To review and assign the custom role to your app, click Review + Assign.

Discover VM instances on Azure

To collect inventory information from your Azure VM instances, follow these steps:

  1. In the command line terminal, change to the directory where you downloaded the mcdc CLI.

  2. Run the discovery:

    Azure Cloud Shell

    To discover VM instances from Azure Cloud Shell by using your existing Azure credentials, run the following command:

    Linux

    ./mcdc discover azure --tenant TENANT_ID 
    
 --subscription SUBSCRIPTION_ID 
    
 --host-credentials

    Windows

    mcdc.exe discover azure --tenant TENANT_ID 
    
 --subscription SUBSCRIPTION_ID 
    
 --host-credentials

    Client secret

    To discover VM instances from any computer with access to your Azure account by using the client secret, run the following command:

    Linux

    ./mcdc discover azure --tenant TENANT_ID 
    
 --subscription SUBSCRIPTION_ID 
    
 --client CLIENT_ID 
    
 --secret CLIENT_SECRET 
    
 [--resource-group RESOURCE_GROUP]

    Windows

    mcdc.exe discover azure --tenant TENANT_ID 
    
 --subscription SUBSCRIPTION_ID 
    
 --client CLIENT_ID 
    
 --secret CLIENT_SECRET 
    
 [--resource-group RESOURCE_GROUP]

    Replace the following:

    • TENANT_ID: the unique identifier for your Azure Active Directory (AAD) tenant.
    • SUBSCRIPTION_ID: the subscription ID that you created in the Create a custom role section.
    • CLIENT_ID: the client ID you created in the Register the mcdc CLI section.
    • CLIENT_SECRET: the client secret you created in the Register the mcdc CLI section.
    • RESOURCE_GROUP: the Azure resource group that contains the VM instances that you want to discover. This flag is optional.

The output should look similar to the following:

  [+] Collecting Azure VM instances...
  Collecting region eu-west-1
  Collected 73 Azure VM instances
  [✓] Collection completed.

After the discovery finishes, to review the collected data, run the discover ls command:

Linux

./mcdc discover ls

Windows

mcdc.exe discover ls

The output should look similar to the following:

    VM Assets
    PLATFORM VM ID                        NAME              COLLECTED DATA   OS                          IP ADDRESSES
    4f7bd883-b9cd-42e8-a67d-af3ec82b7f29  abc-rhel9.0-arm   AZUREVM          Red Hat Enterprise Linux    192.0.2.1
    b5bcefcc-5565-4e45-a05a-fac055f73f14  def-rhel9.0-arm   AZUREVM          Red Hat Enterprise Linux    192.0.2.2
    sfbcesdc-8865-4e4t-a0sf-f8sfyjf75723  ghi-ol9.3         AZUREVM          Linux/UNIX                  192.0.2.3

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