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

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

Absolutely Yes, there are two ways to restart an Azure classic Cloud Service role instance via triggered programmatically per an interval.
Call the REST API Reboot Role Instance with a crontab trigger in programming
You can restart these Virtual Machines of the role via call the REST API Virtual Machines - Restart in programming or directly use the same feature API of Azure SDK for a programming language.

Answer 2

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.