Is there anyway to restart an Azure classic cloud service role every interval?

Question

I'm working with an Azure cloud service (classic) that has a couple role processes. One of them is a worker that's become a little unstable after a week so I want to restart it every few days. Eventually the worker role will be made stable but in the meantime it would be nice to auto-restart it every few days if possible.

Is there a way to restart an Azure classic cloud service worker role every day or so? Programmatically or via configuration?

Answer 1

I asked this question on the Azure forum and on Reddit.

The first response was at the Azure Forum, Marcin said:

You can use for this purpose Azure Automation

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cloud-services/automation-manage-cloud-services

https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/scriptcenter/Reboot-Cloud-Service-PaaS-b337a06d

Then on Reddit, quentech said:

You can do it with a PowerShell Workflow Runbook:

workflow ResetRoleClassic
{
    Param
    (
        [Parameter (Mandatory = $true)]
        [string]$serviceName,
        [Parameter (Mandatory = $true)]
        [string]$slot,
        [Parameter (Mandatory = $true)]
        [string]$instanceName
    )  

    $ConnectionAssetName = "AzureClassicRunAsConnection"

    # Get the connection
    $connection = Get-AutomationConnection -Name $connectionAssetName        

    # Authenticate to Azure with certificate
    Write-Verbose "Get connection asset: $ConnectionAssetName" -Verbose
    $Conn = Get-AutomationConnection -Name $ConnectionAssetName
    if ($Conn -eq $null)
    {
        throw "Could not retrieve connection asset: $ConnectionAssetName. Assure that this asset exists in the Automation account."
    }

    $CertificateAssetName = $Conn.CertificateAssetName
    Write-Verbose "Getting the certificate: $CertificateAssetName" -Verbose
    $AzureCert = Get-AutomationCertificate -Name $CertificateAssetName

    if ($AzureCert -eq $null)
    {
        throw "Could not retrieve certificate asset: $CertificateAssetName. Assure that this asset exists in the Automation account."
    }

    Write-Verbose "Authenticating to Azure with certificate." -Verbose    
    Set-AzureSubscription -SubscriptionName $Conn.SubscriptionName -SubscriptionId $Conn.SubscriptionID -Certificate $AzureCert 

    Select-AzureSubscription -SubscriptionId $Conn.SubscriptionID

    Write-Verbose "Getting $serviceName Role." -Verbose

    $results = Get-AzureRole -ServiceName $serviceName -InstanceDetails
    Write-Output $results

    Write-Verbose "Resetting Role Instance $instanceName" -Verbose

    $results = Reset-AzureRoleInstance -ServiceName $serviceName -Slot $slot -InstanceName $instanceName -Reboot    
    Write-Output $results
}

I made some minor changes to the parameters and removed the outer braces. And thus was able to use the script as is for the most part.