Azure add vm agent to Virtual machine created from special VHD

Question

I have a VM from a special VHD file. This VM was not created through code (in which case it would already have the vm agent installed).

This special VHD has Windows 7, but obviously not the vm agent inside it. How can I automatically install the VM agent to this vm(I know you can manually do it by downloading the MSI file from https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=394789&clcid=0x409 , and installing the agent, but I'm looking for a programmatic solution, perhaps powershell)?

Answer 1

How can I automatically install the VM agent to this vm?

We can use PowerShell to install Azure VM agent, but the VM should be running and can connect to the internet.

we can use this powershell script to install it:

#download msi file:
Invoke-WebRequest -Uri "http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=394789" -OutFile $env:temp\agent.msi
cd $env:temp
# unattended installation of the VM agent
msiexec.exe /i agent.msi /quiet

Like this:

After few minutes, we can find the agent here.