Online Training Event – Wed. May 8th: Building Virtual Machines in the New Microsoft Cloud: From Deployment to Cost Analysis

Windows Azure Infrastructure Services (IaaS) for IT Professionals Join us for Four Series of interactive weekly Webcasts designed to help you understand the true ROI for ‘on-demand’ infrastructure scenarios and walk away with real-world proof of concepts that you can implement in your production environment.

Series 1: Building Virtual Machines in the New Microsoft Cloud: From Deployment to Cost Analysis

In Series 1, you will walk through building networked servers on the Windows Azure™ platform. No physical servers or licenses are required, just a PC with a web browser. Through this online hands-on series we will create a “Pay-As-You-Go” account, three virtual machines, and the networking required to link the two machines together.  We will network a web server with a file server, authenticate through an AD controller, and configure the three servers in a working scenario.  We will discuss each area of the portal, clarify pricing, and learn many of the new ways that you can utilize Windows Azure to become more productive.  You will walk away with a clear understanding on the costs and ROI of the various scenarios and live, ‘production’ proof of concepts.

Part 1: Creating the Virtual Machines and Active Directory - Wed, May 8th, 11:00 am – 1:00 pm Eastern Time – Webcast Link: https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/microsoft/join?id=JC92SP&role=attend&pw=C%29%7E%7E_m%2C%3C6

Prerequisites: You must have a subscription to Windows Azure before arriving to the event. Get one here: http://aka.ms/azurebootcamp

Please NOTE: Windows Azure service fees will be charged to your account during your proof of concept experience. This gives you the advantage of quickly analyzing the real costs associated with the scenarios, and enables you take with you the live proof of concepts.  We estimate the fees incurred to be within $50-$75 dollars

Recommended:  It is recommended that participants have 2 monitors available.  One for viewing the live walk-through, and one for configuring your own Azure experience.

Build Your Own Private Cloud Series Complete! Here is the list of articles and links:

Are you virtualizing your servers? Yes, of course!

Are you spending less time managing your servers as a result?  Hmm … No!

Server Virtualization is Great, But …

Server virtualization has been a great set of technologies to reduce our capital expenses and some operating expenses by consolidating a larger number of virtualized server workloads in a smaller footprint of physical rack space.  As a result, we’ve been able to purchase less data center hardware and likely have lower power and cooling costs in running our data center.

However, most IT Pros are not seeing a reduction in the amount of time they spend with day-to-day management of server operating systems and applications.  Let face it … whether you have 100 physical servers or 100 virtual servers, you still have 100 server operating system instances to administer, configure, monitor, patch and update.  In fact, because of reduced capital costs when using server virtualization, many IT Pros report that they are now faced with managing a much larger ( and growing ) number of operating system instances and applications – these days, it seems like everyone in the company wants their own VMs!  As a result, IT Pros are forced to spend most of their day managing VMs and applications, and often don’t have enough time to spend on improving their IT environments.

Private Cloud … To The Rescue!

Well, Private Cloud is the answer! Private Cloud is not a product, but rather Read more

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

Upcoming Pro Camp Events List for GA, SC, NC, AL

Hey folks, just wanted to let you know of some upcoming pro camp events for the GA, SC, NC, and AL states.

Columbus, GA we will be hosting an afternoon session on May 2nd so for those of you in the area please register here to attend!

Macon, GA we are headed your way!  IT Pro Camp hosted at Mercer University in Macon, GA. Register here

Greenville, SC here we come!  Together in association with Robert Half Technology we will be hosting a 4 hour pro camp event in the afternoon on May 16th,  Click here to register

Durham, NC we are headed your way again!  Together in association with Robert Half Technology we will be hosting a 4 hour pro camp event in the afternoon on May 7th, Click here to register (Link Updated 4/29/2013)

Birmingham, AL on June 4th with two sessions, a morning and afternoon session.  Feel free to sign up for one or both!  Click here to register

Atlanta, GA we will be hosting a full day Pro Camp on May 13th at the Atlanta MS office.  Register here to attend

Stay tuned as we will be announcing more cities and dates soon!

 

 

 

 

Windows Azure IaaS is now G.A.

Windows #Azure Infrastructure as a Service has reached General Availability!  Now is the time to begin thinking through how the Microsoft cloud can help you further your business as well as strengthen your professional skills.  The full announcement can be found here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsazure/archive/2013/04/16/the-power-of-and.aspx

If you want to dive into testing remember our Azure Preview blog series that we ran a few months which included many step-by-step articles.  You can find the list here: http://virtuallycloud9.com/index.php/31-days-of-servers-in-the-cloud-series/

 

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

Announcing: Microsoft Tech Ed “Cloud Challenge” Sweepstakes for IT Pros

In this “Cloud Challenge”, IT Pros will spend a few minutes of their time to complete a couple easy tasks that gets them started with Windows Azure:

  1. Activate a FREE 90-Day Windows Azure Trial Subscription
  2. Build A Virtual Network on the Windows Azure Cloud Platform

In exchange for completing these tasks, they are entered into a sweepstakes drawing where they have an opportunity to win some really cool prizes, such as:

  • Microsoft Tech Ed 2013 North America conference pass
  • Microsoft Surface Pro
  • Microsoft Certification Exam Voucher

You’ll find the complete details on this contest at: http://aka.ms/CloudChallenge201304

Build A Private Cloud Series Has Begun!

Keith Mayer and Yung Chou kicked off our “Build a Private Cloud” series on Monday with this new TechNet Radio episode where they talk through many of the topics involved in Private Clouds and Virtualization environments.  Check out the episode here:

This video was then followed up by Yung Chou with his article on “Why Private Cloud?” In this article he dives into the benefits of building a private cloud in your datacenter, you can check it out here:

http://aka.ms/whyprivatecloud

Next Yung and Keith came back with a video for initial steps into building the proper foundation for a Private Cloud in their second TechNet Radio installment:

Matt Hester continues the series with his step by step guide to building out a proper storage foundation for the private cloud. Check out the article here:
http://blogs.technet.com/b/matthewms/archive/2013/04/03/build-your-private-cloud-in-a-month-foundation-windows-server-2012-storage.aspx

Keith Mayer will be back again next with his discussion on Networking. We hope you enjoy this series, now go get started on your Private Cloud!