Building Azure Resource Manager Templates – Using Domain Join Extension

The scenario that we used to understand and build ARM templates contained a domain controller VM along with one or more VMs that joined the domain service hosted by the DC VM.

To make sure the VMs join the domain, we used PowerShell DSC configuration. One of the biggest quirks, at least what I faced, with DSC extension with ARM templates is that it takes little longer to complete. For example, the complete scenario deployment took almost 48 minutes to deploy. I am not making up that number. Here is the proof.

Now, 48 minutes may not sound that worse but imagine deploying tens of VMs that need to join the domain using the DSC configuration as we saw in the earlier example in this series.

This is where the new JsonADDomainExtension helps! Instead of using DSC configuration to add VMs to a AD domain, we will now use this VM extension. Within the [earlier template that deployed this scenario][1], we will remove the domainJoin resource definition and replace that with JsonADDomainExtension.

Here is how that new resource definition looks.

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"resources": [
    {
        "apiVersion": "2015-06-15",
        "type": "Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachines/extensions",
        "name": "[concat(concat('vm',copyIndex(1)),'/joindomain')]",
        "location": "[resourceGroup().location]",
        "dependsOn": [
                "[concat('Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachines/', concat('vm',copyIndex(1)))]"
        ],                    
        "properties": {
            "publisher": "Microsoft.Compute",
            "type": "JsonADDomainExtension",
            "typeHandlerVersion": "1.0",
            "settings": {
                "Name": "[parameters('adDomainName')]",
                "User": "[concat(parameters('adDomainName'), '\\', parameters('adminUserName'))]",
                "Restart": "true",
                "Options": "3",
                "OUPath": "[parameters('OUPath')]"
            },
            "protectedsettings": {
                "Password": "[parameters('adminPassword')]"
            }
        }
    }
]

In this extension settings, I am re-using a few parameters such as adDomainName, adminUserName, and adminPassword. I added a new parameter called OUPath. This specifies the organization unit for the VM computer account and it is not mandatory to specify this. Let’s take a quick look at the properties of this resource.

The complete template that uses this new extension is rather lengthy. So, click on the below Deploy to Azure button to deploy this template.

As compared to the DSC way of joining a domain, the new domain join extension method took only 31 minutes. This is it for now! Try this template and let me know what you think.