Microsoft Azure provides Point-to-Site VPN (aka. Client VPN) connectivity for secure remote access by development and operations teams to cloud-based workloads that are provisioned on an Azure Virtual Network. Azure Point-to-Site VPN connectivity uses SSTP as a firewall-friendly tunneling protocol and...

Microsoft Azure provides secure access to cloud-based VMs for developers and IT operations teams via Point-to-Site VPN (aka. Client VPN) connectivity. This solution uses SSTP (Secure Socket Tunneling Protocol) to provide a secure, firewall-friendly solution that uses the native VPN client built-in with...

There's lots of tools that can be leveraged for automating Linux workloads on Microsoft Azure , including Azure Automation , PowerShell DSC for Linux , VM Agent Custom Scripts , Cloud-Init , XPlat CLI for Azure , Vagrant , Docker and third-party tools such as Chef and Puppet . Azure provides a wide...

Since previously publishing the Quick Start Guide for Building Highly Available Linux Servers in the Cloud on Microsoft Azure , several people have asked me about ways in which Linux workload provisioning can be automated with Azure. There's lots of tools that can be leveraged for automating...

We can assign static internal IP addresses for Azure Virtual Machines on a Virtual Network using either PowerShell or the new Azure Preview Portal . This is a useful capability for provisioning VM workloads that may require fixed IP address assignments, such as DNS servers. Provisioning a VM with...

When managing Microsoft Azure Virtual Networks via the Azure Management Portal , we can easily see a list of IaaS Virtual Machines and/or PaaS web/worker roles that are connected to a particular virtual network, as shown below. List of resources connected to Azure Virtual Network via Management Portal...

After successfully provisioning new IaaS virtual machines or PaaS cloud services in Microsoft Azure , the focus often turns to workload monitoring for ensuring the continued health of the solutions we've deployed. Microsoft Azure includes native monitoring and email alerting capabilities for deployed...

This article is Part 2 of a two-part series on automating the end-to-end provisioning process for IaaS workloads running on the Microsoft Azure cloud platform. This process includes orchestration of all tasks, provisioning cloud fabric resources, and configuring operating system and application workloads...

In prior articles, we've discussed Azure Automation , Azure VM Agent extensions and PowerShell Desired State Configuration (DSC) as individual tools and approaches for automated workload provisioning. I'm frequently asked about how these tools can be used together to orchestrate end-to-end provisioning...

Thank you to those who attended my webcast event on Open Source + Microsoft Azure last week. It was a great opportunity to discuss and demonstrate the broad support that's available on the Azure cloud platform for Open Source software solutions! In this article, I'm providing a copy of the deck...

A short time ago, I assisted an organization with defining a process for migrating web applications and data running on Ubuntu Linux virtual machines to the Microsoft Azure cloud platform from Amazon AWS. In this article, I’m documenting the general steps we used in an attempt to help other organizations...

Linux is certainly a first-class workload on the Microsoft Azure cloud platform, and it's super-easy to get started with Linux + Azure to build a highly available and scalable solution in just a few minutes. To help jump-start your skills on the steps for building Linux server solutions with...

With all of the buzz this week around the recently announced Windows 10 Technical Preview , you may have missed this announcement that a Technical Preview for the next version of Windows Server and System Center is also now available. Windows Server Technical Preview – Server Manager and Start...

A few weeks ago, I wrote about Auto-Provisioning a New Active Directory Domain Controller in the Azure Cloud using the new VM Agent custom script extension via the Azure Management Portal. Since then, several people in the community have asked about also automating the steps for provisioning Virtual...

In a prior article , we walked through the process of auto-provisioning a new Windows Server Active Directory domain in the Cloud using a custom script that was processed via the Microsoft Azure VM Agent Custom Script Extension. In this article, we’ll build upon this scenario by auto-joining a...

The Azure Virtual Machine Agent Custom Script Extension allows you to download custom PowerShell scripts inside Azure VMs and execute them as part of the post-provisioning process. Custom Script Extensions provide a great deal of flexibility for customizing the provisioning of new VMs without the need...

As of today, the Azure Preview Portal now has the ability to deploy and manage IaaS workloads, including Virtual Machines, Virtual Networks and Cloud Storage! One of the key new enhancements that the new Preview Portal experience provides is the ability to setup complex multi-tier applications in the...

As I’ve been traveling across the US, I’ve spoken to tons of entrepreneurs, IT Pros and Developers alike, that are really interested in starting their own software business. Startup opportunities are growing … Whether as a side-business or a full-fledged organization, startup...

Over the past couple weeks, while we’ve all been focused on the news on Windows 8.1 Update , Windows Phone 8.1 , Microsoft Azure , and Heartbleed , there’s also been a number of significant enhancements and announcements regarding PowerShell – including a preview release of the next...

This article is part 23 in our continuing series on Modernizing Your Infrastructure with Hybrid Cloud by our US IT Pro team. After you've read this article, be sure to catch all of the other articles in our series! As I’ve been traveling and speaking to IT Pros about the great scalability...

UPDATE: Azure Automation has been updated to support Azure Active Directory authentication to simplify the steps for getting started! As an alternative to the steps below for configuring certificate-based authentication, check out this article by Joe Levy , Program Manager on the Azure Automation team...

UPDATES: June 26, 2014 - Updated the PowerShell code in the article below for the latest Azure PowerShell module version. Our IT Pro team has been traveling across the US delivering hands-on IT Camp events on Microsoft Azure and Hybrid Cloud scenarios. At these events, IT Pros frequently...

This article is Part 3 of a three-part article mini-series on using Project Siena and Microsoft Azure cloud services together to build real no-code Windows 8.1 business apps. Project Siena gives users the ability to create powerful apps without writing any code whatsoever, and Microsoft Azure provides...

Project Siena is super-cool, because it extends the ability to build real data-driven business apps to non-developers inside organizations: that is, the business experts and power users who, in many cases, know the inner meaning of business data better than anyone else in an organization. In Part 1 of...

Microsoft Project Siena , currently in Beta 2, enables business users to create powerful no-code apps for Windows 8.1 that can connect to enterprise applications, cloud services and the web. Now, without any programming, your users can quickly create apps that leverage their knowledge of corporate content...