Set Expiry Date on DevTest Lab VMs

A colleague of mine recently handed me the script from https://github.com/Azure-Samples/virtual-machines-powershell-auto-expired/ and asked for my help with what he thought was a permission issue.
The script is 2 years old, so things have changed quite a bit since, but it is just not very clever as it fetches all resources in an entire subscription (something this colleague did not have permission to do), which by all means is a bad idea.

I made some improvements and wanted to share. Below is simply run and you are prompted to select a lab, then one or more VMs in that lab, and finally in how many days the VMs should expire.

Note that I will not be updating below with fixes so grab it from Technet here.

# you can remove the TenantId if you have just a single tenant
$TenantId = ''
Select-AzureRmSubscription -TenantId $TenantId -SubscriptionId '' | Out-Null
Function Set-AzureVirtualMachineExpiredDate 
{ 
    [CmdletBinding()] 
    Param 
    ( 
        [Parameter(Mandatory=$true, ValueFromPipeline, Position=1)][ValidateNotNull()][String]$VMName, 
        [Parameter(Mandatory=$true)][ValidateNotNull()][String]$LabName, 
        [Parameter(Mandatory=$true)][ValidateNotNull()][String]$LabResourceGroupName,
        [Parameter(Mandatory=$true)][ValidateNotNull()][DateTime]$ExpiredUTCDate 
    ) 
 
    Begin{
        $Jobs = @()
    }

    Process
    {
        try {
            # get vm info 
            $targetVMInfo = Get-AzureRmResource -ResourceName "$LabName/$VMName" -ResourceGroupName $LabResourceGroupName `
                                                -ResourceType 'Microsoft.DevTestLab/labs/virtualMachines' -ExpandProperties
        }
        catch {
            Throw "$VMName not found in $LabName, error was:`n$_" 
        }
     
        # get vm properties 
        $vmProperties = $targetVMInfo.Properties 
     
        # set expired date
        $vmProperties | Add-Member -MemberType NoteProperty -Name expirationDate -Value $ExpiredUTCDate -Force 
        
        Write-Host "Setting expiry date to $ExpiredUTCDate on $LabName/$VMName..."
        $Jobs += Set-AzureRmResource -ResourceId $targetVMInfo.ResourceId -Properties $vmProperties -Force `
                    -ErrorAction Stop -AsJob
    } # end of process

    End
    {
        Write-Host "Waiting for jobs to complete..."
        $Jobs | Wait-Job | Receive-Job | ForEach-Object {
            Write-Host "Expiry date on $($_.Name) set to $($_.Properties.expirationDate)"
        }
    }
} 

$Lab = Get-AzureRmResource -ResourceType 'Microsoft.DevTestLab/labs' | Out-GridView -Title "Select DevTest Lab" -PassThru
$LabName = $Lab | Select-Object -ExpandProperty Name

$VM = Get-AzureRmResource -ResourceName "$LabName/*" -ResourceType 'Microsoft.DevTestLab/labs/virtualMachines' | `
        Out-GridView -Title "Select VM" -PassThru

$AddDays = 1..14 | Out-GridView -Title "Expire in days..." -PassThru

$VM | ForEach-Object {("$($_.Name)".Split('/') | Select-Object -Last 1)} | Set-AzureVirtualMachineExpiredDate `
                                    -LabName $LabName `
                                    -LabResourceGroupName $Lab.ResourceGroupName `
                                    -ExpiredUTCDate (Get-Date).AddDays($AddDays)

Out-GridView with Selected Properties

A script is worth a thousand words, right?

<#
 I use Out-GridView (alias: ogv) alot for interactively selecting objects. Also sometimes I need some extra information not 
 described in the object itself.
 Let's say we need to enumerate files in c:\temp for a list of computers. After collecting all the files we wish to use ogv 
 for displaying some of the properties like the name of the file, the size in kb and the computer on which the file is found. 
 We will pretend (because this is an example anyone can run) that the file object is missing the last part, hence we add it 
 to the object using Add-Member

 another usecase is simply that ogv will not show the properties we wish to see. Using Select-Object will create a new object
 and if we use the -Passthru parameter to ogv it will not be the original object we get. In below example we convert the size
 of each file to kb, which also uses Select-Object and a calculated property to do the conversion
#>

$ComputerNames = @($env:COMPUTERNAME)
$FilesInTemp = @()

foreach($ComputerName in $ComputerNames)
{
    $FilesInTemp += Invoke-Command -ScriptBlock {
        Get-ChildItem -Path c:\temp -File
    } -ComputerName $ComputerName | `
        Add-Member -Name MachineName -Value $ComputerName -MemberType NoteProperty -PassThru
}
# Now we have a list of files that we can select from, but below fails
$FilesInTemp |  Select-Object -Property Name, @{ Name = 'SizeInKb'; Expression = {  $_.Length/1KB }}, MachineName | `
                Out-GridView -Title "Select files to delete (example 1)" -PassThru | `
                Remove-Item -WhatIf
<#
 the problem is that Select-Object creates a new object with just the selected properties. Why Select-Object? Try running 
 the line below
#>
Get-ChildItem -Path c:\temp -File | Out-GridView
<# 
 we did get some decent properties, but it is showing the same we would get from a Format-Table, ie. the default properties
 if we want something different we use Select-Object, but as mentioned we get an entirely new object (with just the properties
 selected) , which is why Remove-Item fails
 A solution which can be applied in probably every case is found below
 The only difference is that we add the object to itself as a member and then later "extract" it before the pipe to Remove-Item
#>
$FilesInTemp = @()
foreach($ComputerName in $ComputerNames)
{
    $FilesInTemp += Invoke-Command -ScriptBlock {
        Get-ChildItem -Path c:\temp -File
    } -ComputerName $ComputerName | `
        Add-Member -Name MachineName -Value $ComputerName -MemberType NoteProperty -PassThru | `
        ForEach-Object {$_ | Add-Member -Name _self -Value $_ -MemberType NoteProperty -PassThru}
}

$FilesInTemp | Select-Object -Property Name, @{ Name = 'SizeInKb'; Expression = {  $_.Length/1KB }}, MachineName, _self | `
    Out-GridView -Title "Select files to delete (example 2)" -PassThru | `
    Select-Object -ExpandProperty _self | `
    Remove-Item -WhatIf

<#
 We can make this even easier with some helper functions. Below I have used _self as the property name. Some may recognize
 the name as used in Python, and equivalent of "this" in C#
#>

Function Add-Self
{
    process
    {
        ForEach-Object {$_ | Add-Member -Name '_self' -Value $_ -MemberType NoteProperty -PassThru}
    }
}

Function Get-Self
{
    process
    {
        $_ | Select-Object -ExpandProperty '_self'
    }
}
$FilesInTemp = @()
foreach($ComputerName in $ComputerNames)
{
    $FilesInTemp += Invoke-Command -ScriptBlock {
        Get-ChildItem -Path c:\temp -File
    } -ComputerName $ComputerName | `
        Add-Member -Name MachineName -Value $ComputerName -MemberType NoteProperty -PassThru | `
        Add-Self
}

$FilesInTemp | Select-Object -Property Name, @{ Name = 'SizeInKb'; Expression = {  $_.Length/1KB }}, MachineName, _self | `
    Out-GridView -Title "Select files to delete (example 3)" -PassThru | `
    Get-Self | `
    Remove-Item -WhatIf