How to check if a virtual machine is running using Python

Question

I am writing a python runbook to be able to start or stop a Virtual machine. If the VM is running, I would like to stop it. If it is not running, I would like to turn it on. I need to write an if condition to do this but I don't know how to get the status of my Virtual machine in azure so I can make the comparison.

I tried using the following:

compute_client.virtual_machines.get(resourceGroupName, vmName, expand = 'instanceview')

But when I print this, I don't see how to access the status of the Virtual machine.

This is my script code:

import os
from azure.mgmt.compute import ComputeManagementClient
import azure.mgmt.resource
import automationassets

import sys

resourceGroupName = str(sys.argv[1])
vmName = str(sys.argv[2])

def get_automation_runas_credential(runas_connection):
    from OpenSSL import crypto
    import binascii
    from msrestazure import azure_active_directory
    import adal

    # Get the Azure Automation RunAs service principal certificate
    cert = automationassets.get_automation_certificate("AzureRunAsCertificate")
    pks12_cert = crypto.load_pkcs12(cert)
    pem_pkey = crypto.dump_privatekey(crypto.FILETYPE_PEM,pks12_cert.get_privatekey())

    # Get run as connection information for the Azure Automation service principal
    application_id = runas_connection["ApplicationId"]
    thumbprint = runas_connection["CertificateThumbprint"]
    tenant_id = runas_connection["TenantId"]

    # Authenticate with service principal certificate
    resource ="https://management.core.windows.net/"
    authority_url = ("https://login.microsoftonline.com/"+tenant_id)
    context = adal.AuthenticationContext(authority_url)
    return azure_active_directory.AdalAuthentication(
    lambda: context.acquire_token_with_client_certificate(
            resource,
            application_id,
            pem_pkey,
            thumbprint)
    )

# Authenticate to Azure using the Azure Automation RunAs service principal
runas_connection = automationassets.get_automation_connection("AzureRunAsConnection")
azure_credential = get_automation_runas_credential(runas_connection)

# Initialize the compute management client with the RunAs credential and specify the subscription to work against.
compute_client = ComputeManagementClient(
    azure_credential,
    str(runas_connection["SubscriptionId"])
)

printMe = compute_client.virtual_machines.get(resourceGroupName, vmName, expand = 'instanceview')
print(printMe)

#Start the VM if not running:

print('\n' + 'Starting the ' + ' ' + vmName + ' ' + 'in ' + ' ' + resourceGroupName)
async_vm_start = compute_client.virtual_machines.start(
  resourceGroupName, vmName)
async_vm_start.wait()

Answer 1

The Azure SDK azure.mgmt.compute that you used is right. You just need to get the VM state inside that information. The code below:

vm = compute_client.virtual_machines.get('v-chaxu-ChinaCXPTeam', 'azureUbuntu18', expand='instanceView')

# These are the statuses of the VM about the event execution status and the vm state, the vm state is the second one.
statuses = vm.instance_view.statuses
print(statuses[1].display_status)

The output here:

For more details, see the instance_view in VM information.

Or you can also get the instance_view directly and the code below:

instance_view = compute_client.virtual_machines.instance_view('v-chaxu-ChinaCXPTeam', 'azureUbuntu18')
print(instance_view.statuses[1].display_status)

The output is also the same as above. For more details, see the function instance_view(resource_group_name, vm_name, custom_headers=None, raw=False, **operation_config).