Azure IaaS Online Pro Camp Series : Building Virtual Machines in the New Microsoft Cloud: From Deployment to Cost Analysis – Part 1

We are excited to provide this new Pro Camp series designed for IT Pros wishing to understand not only the deployment considerations of Windows Azure but also the cost models as well!  In this lab we will utilize a Pay-As-You-Go account to deploy 3 virtual machines.  The second part of this lab will get the machines talking to one another with web and file services.  The third part of the lab will help those who wish to un-deploy the virtual machines so as to avoid further charges, then we will look into the cost breakdown.  So without further delay, we hope you enjoy Part 1 : Step-By-Step Virtual Machines in the Cloud:

Virtual Machine Templates in System Center 2012 SP1 VMM: Build Your Private Cloud (Series)

Today’s blog post in our “Build Your Private Cloud in a Month” series is the fourth of a 5-part mini-series we’re calling “Deploying Private Cloud Workloads”.  This week we (Kevin Remde, Blain Barton and I) are going to detail and demonstrate some of the key areas in System Center 2012 SP1 Virtual Machine Manager that support the foundational concepts and objects in your Private Cloud environment.  The mini-series parts are listed here:
1.  Hardware Profiles (Monday)

2.  Guest OS Profiles (Tuesday)

3.  Application Profiles (Wednesday)

4.  VM Templates (Thursday) <—Today!

5.  Service Templates (Friday)

Required if following along in the lab:

System Center 2012 w/SP1 Virtual Machine Manager should be installed properly on the domain with at least one Hyper-V host managed in the instance.  For my lab guide on deploying VMM check here:

http://virtuallycloud9.com/index.php/2013/04/build-your-private-cloud-installing-virtual-machine-manager-step-by-step/

What is a VM Template?

VM templates are preconfigured virtual machines images and configurations that are included in the library of Virtual Machine Manager(VMM), which are used for deploying new virtual machines into the environment.

Why is a VM Template useful?

Let’s suppose you have a gold image of Server 2012 that has software and settings customized to your particular needs by templating this image, it can be used to deploy future virtual servers without the need to walk through the same post OS installation steps time and time again.  VM templates can also be used as part of a VMM Service deployment as well, where a group of VMs are deployed to handle a given workload.  In this case, a web server might already be configured to work in a load balancing scenario so that the deployment of an extra VM into the cloud service takes minimal time. We will not be tackling cloud services in this module today however. Read more

Build Your Private Cloud: Installing Virtual Machine Manager – Step by Step

Our series is in full swing and now its time to walk through the installation of System Center 2012 VMM to begin managing our VMware, Hyper-V, and Xen hosts, virtual machines, and templates.  Assuming you have Server 2012 installed already, plenty of disk space and at least 4GB of ram, your first step is to go grab the VMM bits from here: System Center 2012 with SP1

When the download begins you can pause all of the other images except for VMM, so it would look like this:

Once you have the VMM server OS built, we need to install the Windows Assessment and Deployment Toolkit as it is a pre-requisite for the VMM installation process to be successful.  You can grab the toolkit Read more

Early Experts Virtual Study Hall is Now Live! Join us until 3pm EST for Q&A on Server/Cloud Labs

There’s so many cool features to explore in the latest Windows infrastructure offerings that it’s hard to find time to explore all of them.  Beginning February 8th, you can block time on a weekly basis between 10AM and 3PM Eastern Time to join a Virtual Study Hall and work through real-world hands-on activities with assistance from a field-experienced IT Pro Technical Evangelist!  http://aka.ms/StudyHall Read more

Keith Mayer continues 31 Days of Servers in the Cloud – Sharepoint Labs in Azure

From Keith “Now that SharePoint Server 2013 has been released, I frequently get asked about ways in which a SharePoint 2013 lab environment can be easily built for studying, testing and/or performing a proof-of-concept.  You could certainly build this lab environment on your own hardware, but due to the level of SharePoint 2013 hardware requirements, a lot of us may not have sufficient spare hardware to implement an on-premise lab environment.”  Check out his post here to build your own SharePoint lab!

31 Days of Servers in the Cloud – Building Free Lab VMs in the Microsoft Cloud (Part 2 of 31)

Want to play with Server 2012 but you don’t have the hardware readily available, well here’s your chance to do so for free.  Windows Azure IaaS allows for the creation of virtual machines in the fastest public cloud service on the market today.  To get started, simply sign up here.  This will require a credit card for verification purposes, but don’t worry, you will only be charged if you allow the system to do so.  Meaning, if subscribe to more services beyond what is available in the free trial period then it will let you know the new services have fees associated.  Now to get started with creating a VM, you should have landed at this page, then select “Virtual Machines.”  Next click Read more

Installing Windows Server 2012 in Core Mode – Step by Step – Part II

In the last article we installed Windows Server 2012 in Core Mode but we still need to configure the server.  Now we are going to walk through various options and configuration methods.  You will want to take note of two commands right away, since the only window you will see in Core mode by default is the command prompt.   By typing in “help” at the prompt then hitting “enter” you will find a list of commands available for general system maintenance.  The command I will be focusing on in this lesson is “sconfig.cmd”.

Important note:  Read more