Introduction to Windows Azure Automation and Azure Run Books

One of the cool thing which Microsoft introduced recently to Powershell or Automation community is Azure Automation which is nothing but infrastructure or framework required to develop and execute Powershell scripts (cmdlts). In a nutshell the we can define Azure automation as "Task Automation and Configuration Management Framework on Windows Azure Cloud" .

For what we need Azure Automation?
To automate the activities which we perform from management portal like Creating, upgrading, removing, monitoring, backing up resources on azure environment. With Azure Automation, now Dev/Ops team can run their windows power-shell workflows to integrate, orchestrate, and automate IT business processes.

What is Runbook?
A run book is Powershell cmdlts which can be scheduled and can be executed as a workflow. Just to give an example when you create a Runbook in Azure automation you will be following areas:
1>Author: this is the workflow powershell scripts which does some specific task such as taking backup of a database to which you can pass parameters.
2>Schedule: this is a scheduler which helps to run the powershell scripts which we created under Author on specific date and time.
3>Jobs: Are the scheduled tasks which are either completed or in queue or running or failed.

Make a note that, Runbooks in Azure Automation cannot access resources in your data center that are not accessible from the public cloud. They also have no way to access Orchestrator or SMA runbooks.

Azure Automation runbooks can access any external resources that can be accessed from a Windows PowerShell Workflow.

Following example will give fair idea about how to create and run a "Helo world" Runbook from azure automation gallery.

http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/automation-create-runbook-from-samples/