You can think of Azure Remote App as basically Remote Desktop Services (RDS) as a service. At this point in time you will need to enable Azure Remote App using the ‘classic’ portal. Here’s how you do it.

Firstly, login to the Azure portal and scroll down the options on the left until you identify the option for Remote App that appears like:

Select this.

Typically, when you select this you will see that no current RemoteApp collection has been configured as shown above.

Select the Create a RemoteApp Collection link.

This will display the configuration dialog as shown above. Enter a collection name, region, plan and template image.

The region is the data center in which you wish to host this Remote App service. Typically you’ll want to select the region that is closest to you.

There are currently four pricing tiers and you can find more information about these here:

Azure Remote App pricing plans

Typically you’ll want to select the Standard or Premium Plan.

You can then select from the template image to use for the remote server. You have the choice of a number of preconfigured images or you can use your own if it has been suitably prepared. In this case the Office Professional Plus (30-day trial) will be select to provide Office applications to users.

When ready, select the Create RemoteApp Collection at the bottom of the page.

You should now see that RemoteApp collection has commenced creation as shown above. This process will take 15 – 30 minutes typically.

You’ll see that there is also the option to create a RemoteApp collection with a Virtual Network. This allows the RDS server to be placed on an existing Azure LAN so it can share other Azure resources. This article won’t cover this specifically, it will be covered in an upcoming article.

You may also see that by default you receive a 30 day trial of RemoteApp. If you want to upgrade to paid subscriptions immediately ensure you select the option provided at the top of the screen as shown above.

After the service has been enabled you will a check mark as shown above. Select the service name to view the settings.

Under the User Access option you will a list of any users who have access. You can add users that have Microsoft Account or if they are part of the Azure tenant already.

Under the Publishing option you can see all the applications that will be available to users. These applications are those that are currently on the virtual machine image used.

You can make additional options available by selecting the Publish button and either manually entering the directory path or you can select from the start menu as shown above.

Users can then use the appropriate RemoteApp application on their device to access this instance of RemoteApp and run the applications. Above is an example of the Windows 10 Universal App. Remote App device clients can be downloaded from:

https://www.remoteapp.windowsazure.com/en/

At the beginning of my recent post about creating an Azure files backup using Azure Resource Manager (ARM) and the Azure portal I detailed how to create an Azure Resource Group. This is of course not the only way that you can create an Azure Resource Group, you can also use PowerShell.

Before you use PowerShell make sure you have read my article:

Connecting to Azure Resource Manager via PowerShell

and you follow the steps outline to connect to your Azure Resource Manager account.

If we look at the Azure portal we see there is currently only one Resource Group called CIA.

Once connected to the Azure tenant with PowerShell run the command:

new-azurermresourcegroup –name “name” –location “data-center”

where you need to enter the desired “name” and “datacenter” here I have chosen to create a new Azure Resource group called cia2 located in the Australia East data center (“australiaeast”).

I’ve just uploaded a video presentation I gave a while back on creating a basics LAN in Azure. The process uses the Azure Service Manager portal to do this in a ‘classic’ cloud deployment. Note, this is not the same as with the Azure Resource Manager (ARM). I’ll be doing something around that soon.

In previous articles I’ve covered how to set up Azure files and folders backup as well as how to actually backup data. I’ll now show you how to recover data backed up using Azure Backup for files and folders.

Launch the Microsoft Azure Backup program. In the top right reselect Recover Data.

The Recover Data Wizard will now launch. You’ll firstly need to select whether you are restoring files from the current location or whether you are on a different server.

If you are on a different server you will need the Azure Recovery Vault credentials for verification as shown above. For information about obtaining those see the previous article.

Select Next to continue.

You can now either browse or search for the files you wish to restore. In this case Browse is selected.

Press the Next button to continue.

You’ll now need to select a point in time from which to restore your files. In this case there is only one option.

Select Next to continue.

Locate the files you wish to restore by placing a check mark next to them.

Press the Next button to continue.

You now need to determine where the files will be restored to. In this they will be restored to an alternate location (the desktop). You also need to determine whether you wish to keep any duplicate copies and whether to restore the permissions to those files.

Select the Next button to continue once you have made your selections.

You will now receive confirmation of the restore process as shown above. If everything is in order select Recover.

The restore process will now commence. The amount of time to restore will depend on factors such as bandwidth and the amount of data you have chosen to restore.

When the restore process is complete you will receive the above notification. Select Close to continue.

If you now look in the backup software console you should see a successful backup job has completed and there is information in the Last Recovery area in the lower right as shown above.

If you select the View details link under this Last Recovery area you will see a summary of the recover job as shown above.

You should also now see your recovered files as shown above.

The important thing to remember is that you can restore data from Azure File backup to any machine, you’ll simply need to have the Vault credentials if you perform this on a machine that wasn’t the original source.

In a previous post I detailed how to set up an Azure Recovery Service Vault using Azure Resource Manager and then installing the Azure files backup client. In this article I’m going to walk through how to actually setup and run a backup to Azure for your files and folders.

Run the Microsoft Azure Backup software on the machine to be backed up. If you haven’t configured this yet, read my previous article on setting all this up.

With the Microsoft Azure Backup software running as shown above, select Schedule Backup in the top right.

The above dialog will appear. Select Next to continue.

You are now taken to a dialog where you need to select the files and folders from the current machine.

Select the Add Items button to select the items you wish to backup.

This will then pop up a file explorer like that shown above. Select the locations you wish to backup and press the OK button.

You should now see the backup locations you selected  displayed in the top window as shown above. You can also use the Exclusion Settings if you want to filter what is backed up from the locations selected.

When complete, select the Next button to continue.

You’ll then be prompted to schedule how often you wish to backup your locations. The most backups you can currently perform is three per day.

Once you have made you selection select Next to continue.

You are now prompted to enter the retention policy settings. This determines which backups are retained and for how long.

When you have made your selection press Next to continue.

Given that the initial backup of the locations can be quite large you are now presented with the option to perform the initial backup offline to local storage. If your Azure datacenter supports the option, you can then ship this local back to Microsoft so it seed any future backups.

Details on this process can be found here:

Offline backup workflow in Azure Backup

If you leave the option set to Automatically over the network, the backup data will be sent across the Internet to Azure.

Press the Next to continue.

You will now see a confirmation screen.

Select Finish to complete the configuration.

You will now see the backup schedule being created.

and you should receive confirmation that it has been successful.

Select Close to continue.

The backup will now run automatically in the background based on the settings you configured. However, if you wish to wish to manually run a backup at any time select the Back Up Now link in the top right.

This will launch a dialog as shown above asking you to confirm running a backup.

Select the Back Up button to continue.

The backup will now commence by taking a snap shot of the drive.

You should then see data being transferred by the program as shown above.

When the backup has completed you will receive the above message. Select the Close button to return to the backup software console

If you now look at the console you should see a successful backup job has completed.