• Intro
• Prerequisites
• Basic usage
  • Interactive login — ARM only
  • With on-node data
  • Service principal authentication
  • Custom output path
• What the report covers
• Parameter reference
• A few things to be aware of

Intro

One thing I have always found a bit tedious with Azure Local is documenting a cluster after the fact. The information is all there — spread across ARM, the portal, the nodes themselves — but pulling it together into something you can hand to a colleague or store in a wiki takes a surprising amount of clicking and copying.

I wrote Get-AzLocalDoc to solve that. It is a standalone PowerShell script that queries Azure ARM (and optionally the HCI nodes directly) and produces a structured Markdown report covering identity, network config, security, workloads, updates, and more.

The script is open source and available here: https://github.com/chkja/Get-AzLocalDoc

Prerequisites

The script depends on three Az PowerShell modules. Install them in your current user scope if you do not already have them:

Install-Module -Name Az.Accounts  -Scope CurrentUser
Install-Module -Name Az.Resources -Scope CurrentUser
Install-Module -Name Az.StackHCI  -Scope CurrentUser

If you plan to use -IncludeNodeData to pull storage and OS-level config directly from the nodes, you also need:

• WinRM / PowerShell remoting enabled on the HCI nodes.

Basic usage

Interactive login — ARM only

This is the quickest way to get started. Authenticate with your own account and point the script at the resource group:

.\Get-AzLocalDoc.ps1 -ResourceGroupName "rg-azlocal-prod" -ClusterName "hci-cluster-01"

If -ClusterName is omitted, the script will auto-detect the cluster from the resource group.

With on-node data

To include storage pools, physical disks, volume details, and per-node network adapter information, add -IncludeNodeData:

.\Get-AzLocalDoc.ps1 `
  -ResourceGroupName "rg-azlocal-prod" `
  -ClusterName "hci-cluster-01" `
  -IncludeNodeData `
  -NodeCredential (Get-Credential)

HINT -IncludeNodeData connects to the first cluster node for S2D data. All nodes share the same storage pool view, so one connection is enough.

Service principal authentication

For automation scenarios or cross-tenant use:

$cred = New-Object PSCredential(
    "your-app-id",
    (ConvertTo-SecureString "your-secret" -AsPlainText -Force)
)

.\Get-AzLocalDoc.ps1 `
  -ResourceGroupName "rg-azlocal-prod" `
  -TenantId "your-tenant-id" `
  -ServicePrincipal `
  -Credential $cred

Custom output path

By default, the report is written to .\AzureLocal-<ClusterName>-YYYYMMDD-HHmm.md in the current directory. Override this with -OutputPath:

.\Get-AzLocalDoc.ps1 -ResourceGroupName "rg-azlocal-prod" -OutputPath "C:\docs\cluster.md"

What the report covers

The output is a structured Markdown file you can paste into a wiki, commit to a repo, or attach to a ticket. Here is what each section contains:

Section	Contents
Report Metadata	Cluster identity, connectivity status, provisioning state, billing model, cluster version, IMDS attestation, custom location, Arc resource bridge, tags
Validation Summary	Live status checks: connectivity, provisioning, Arc state, extension health, updates, Defender, logical networks
Deployment Scenario & Scale	Deployment mode, node count, storage mode, capabilities, attestation endpoint
Node Configuration	Per-node: IP, hardware model, OS version, serial number, CPU cores, memory, OEM activation
Network Configuration	Storage auto IP, switchless config, per-intent adapter and RDMA details, storage VLANs, infrastructure IPs, logical networks, NSGs
Active Directory	Domain FQDN, OU path, secrets location
Security Configuration	BitLocker, Credential Guard, DRTM, HVCI, WDAC, SMB signing and encryption
Microsoft Defender for Cloud	Per-plan status: Servers, Containers, SQL, Kubernetes, DNS, Storage
Billing & Licensing	Billing model, trial days, last billing, software assurance, Windows Server Subscription
Monitoring & Insights	Azure Monitor agent status, Data Collection Rules
Workloads & Platform	Arc extensions, VMs and gallery images (cross-subscription), Kubernetes clusters, applied and available updates, storage

See the example report in the repo for a full sample output.

Parameter reference

Parameter	Required	Description
-ResourceGroupName	✅	Resource group containing the cluster
-ClusterName		Cluster name — auto-detected if omitted
-SubscriptionId		Override the Az context subscription
-TenantId		Required for cross-tenant authentication
-ServicePrincipal		Use service principal instead of interactive login
-Credential	With -ServicePrincipal	AppId and secret as PSCredential
-IncludeNodeData		Collect on-node data via PowerShell remoting
-NodeCredential		Credential for HCI node remoting
-OutputPath		Output file path (default: .\AzureLocal-<cluster>-<date>-<time>.md)

A few things to be aware of

• ARM-only mode does not capture physical NIC details, storage pool internals, or per-node OS-level configuration — use -IncludeNodeData for that.
• Secrets, passwords, and sensitive keys are never included in the output. Azure ARM does not return these values.
• Some resource types may require specific API versions depending on your cluster’s registration age. If you hit an error on a specific section, check the cluster’s ARM API version support.

The script is MIT licensed. If you run into issues or have ideas for additional sections, the repo is open to contributions: https://github.com/chkja/Get-AzLocalDoc