If you are a Microsoft reseller and subscribe to something like Action Pack you are probably entitled to some free Azure credits every month. If you are then you should visit:

http://manage.windowsazure.com

and login using the same credentials you use to login to the Microsoft Partner Portal. Doing so should activate you free partner Azure account and provide monthly credits.

You can of course also sign up for a free Azure demo account whether you are Microsoft reseller or not. This walk through will show you how to sing up for a stand alone Azure account and get a 30 day trial. You’ll need a valid credit card to register (which will only be charged if you start using the service beyond the free trial but you will need a valid credit card to create an account).

To sign up for a free trial account do the following:

Visit www.azure.com and select the option to Try for free either in the centre or in the top right of the page.

You’ll be taken to a page like you see above that lets you know you’ll currently receive over $200 worth of Azure credits to use for 30 days.

Select the Try it now button to continue.

You’ll then need to sign in using a Microsoft account. if you don’t have one or want to create a separate account for this trial you can create on on this page. I have a previous blog post that steps you through the process of creating a Microsoft account here:

https://blog.ciaops.com/2013/01/creating-windows-live-id.html

Select the Sign in button to proceed. This Microsoft account will be the one that you use to login an manage Azure.

Now, it is possible to use an Office 365 account here and I’ll dive into that is a later post but in this example I just want to set up a stand alone trial so I am going to use a Microsoft account this is independent of ANY Office 365 login I have.

You now taken to a page where you need to complete details about yourself. You’ll then be asked to complete a mobile phone verification.

Basically, you need to provide a phone number that can be sent a SMS or called directly. You will receive a code that you place in the lower field and press the Verify code button.

If code is correct you’ll get a green tick and be able to proceed.

You’ll then need to put in your credit card details. Remember these will only be charged if you use the Azure services beyond the trial date or go over the free trial credits.

You now need to agree to the Azure terms by placing a check in the box.

Press the Sign up button to proceed.

All your information will be verified and if correct an new Azure trial account will be created for you.

You should now see your subscription being created as shown above. Use the refresh link if needed to get the status.

In a matter of moments the trial will be created and you should see the summary screen above indicating the Azure credits you have.

In the top right of the window you will find the link Portal, select this to proceed.

Complete the introductory Azure tour.

You’ll then be taken to the Azure portal as you can see above. Now you can start playing with all the Azure goodness for 30 days or until your credits expire.

Enjoy!

One of the real benefits of using virtualization is the fact that upgrading is generally much easier than with physical machines. a case in point.

In a previous post, I mentioned how Azure now makes available machines that use solid state drives (SSDs). This allows disk access to be much faster, therefore improving the overall performance of the machine.

These new SSD virtual machines are of course more expensive but for the demo and testing purposes I need them for, it makes sense. Now, if I had to perform this type of upgrade on a physical machine it would generally mean buying a new machine and doing a complete rebuild, which as you can appreciate is very time consuming.

Even if I had these machines virtualized on a host machine I ran myself it would mean buying and configuring a new host machine and copying the virtual machine images onto this. That would also take a long time given that virtual machine images can be gigabytes and gigabytes in size.

However, with Azure upgrading my virtual machines to take advantage of the latest features is a breeze. Here’s how.

I firstly login to the Azure management portal at:

http://manage.windowsazure.com

I then locate the Virtual Machines menu option on the left and select it. I then locate the virtual machine I wish to upgrade and select it.

I then select the Configure menu option across the top, which shows me the screen above.

In there you can see that current Virtual Machine Size is A3 (4 cores, 7GB or RAM).

What I do is simply pull this option down and select a new machine that is utilizing SSDs, in this case D2 (2 cores, 7GB memory).

I then select the Save option at the bottom of the screen to update the changes for my machine.

Now if the virtual machine you are upgrading is running you are prompted that it may need to be rebooted to apply the changes. In most cases you want to make these changes with the machine off, which it is in this case, so press OK to apply the changes.

Azure now hums away updating the machine.

and a few moments later it is all done and my machine is now running with SSDs.

You can then return to the main Virtual Machine Console, select the machine and then the Start button at the bottom.

You machine will start spinning up and you can then use it without having to install any software or do further upgrades.

How easy was that? This is the way all hardware upgrades should be and the reason why you should be using virtualization and even more so why you should be using a service like Azure. It removes all the pain from the things that keep you from doing what you want to do when it comes to technology.

Got an email today from the Azure team saying that they are now offering Virtual Machines with Solid State Drives. The details of the email are below:

 

We’ve announced the general availability of a new series of Standard tier instances called the D-series for Virtual Machines and Cloud Services and its related pricing. These instances have solid-state disk (SSD)-based local drives and faster processors relative to many of the A-series instances. The D-series instances can be used as VMs, as well as web or worker roles in Cloud Services, and are well suited for applications that demand faster CPU performance, local disk performance, or higher memories. Please note that the SSD drives in the D-series are non-persistent.

		Following are the CPU, memory, and disk configurations of the D-series instances:                         General Purpose       Name   Name   # of vCPUs   Memory (GB)   SSD HDD (GB)     STANDARD_D1   1   3.5   50     STANDARD_D2   2   7   100     STANDARD_D3   4   14   200     STANDARD_D4   8   28   400
	Memory Intensive		STANDARD_D11   2   14   100     STANDARD_D12   4   28   200     STANDARD_D13   8   56   400     STANDARD_D14   16   112   800

   

Through December 31, 2014, the prices for Standard D-Series Virtual Machines will be charged at US South Central rates for all regions. We are currently offering promotional pricing and any future price increases will be announced with 30 days’ notice. For more information, visit the Virtual Machines webpage. To get a comprehensive look at pricing, visit the Virtual Machines Pricing Details webpage. Note: As an Azure customer, you are receiving this email because we are required to notify you of all pricing changes. This is the only communication that you will receive directly from Microsoft regarding these pricing changes. Thank you, Your Azure Team

 

I have spun up a new Azure Virtual Machine using one of the new “D” ,machines with SSD’s and they are noticeably quicker.

Of course theses new machines are more expensive that machines with normal hard disks but for faster demos they are perfect for what I need. You can also expect the price of these offerings to drop over time as SSD’s become cheaper and cheaper.

Azure is really going ahead in leaps and bounds from what I see.

If you create virtual machines in Microsoft Azure, you typically connect to them using RDP (if they are of course Windows machines). What you may not be aware of is the fact that you restrict, or whitelist, which remote IP addresses are allowed to RDP to these machines. Here’s how you configure this.

You login to you Microsoft Azure console as shown above.

In here is a Windows Domain Controller machine. What I want to do is restrict remote RDP access to this machine for security reasons (since it is a Domain Controller after all).

To do that select the Virtual Machine from the list and then the Endpoints option from the menu across the top as shown above.

At the moment there are only have two endpoints, one for PowerShell and one for Remote Desktop (i.e. RDP). Both of these services are accessible to the outside world via the Public port (which I have obscured for privacy reasons). These Public ports map to familiar Private ports at the virtual machine.

Thus, Remote Desktop connects via a random port from the Internet and this then mapped to the familiar port 3389 port internally at the machine.

To set security on an Endpoint, simply select it and then select the MANAGE ACL button at the bottom of the screen.

You will then see a dialog that allows you to enter a description as well as a remote subnet. You can then set the action to be either Permit or Deny. With RDP traffic the default is to allow all inbound traffic for that endpoint. All other ports are blocked for inbound traffic unless endpoints are created for those ports.

Points to consider:

1. No ACL – By default when an endpoint is created, Azure permits all for the endpoint.
2. Permit – When you add one or more “permit” ranges, you are denying all other ranges by default. Only packets from the permitted IP range will be able to communicate with the virtual machine endpoint.
3. Deny – When you add one or more “deny” ranges, you are permitting all other ranges of traffic by default.
4. Combination of Permit and Deny – You can use a combination of “permit” and “deny” when you want to carve out a specific IP range to be permitted or denied.

(Reference – http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/azure/dn376541.aspx)

You can of course configure these ACLs using PowerShell and the reference for that is here:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/azure/dn376543.aspx

more information about setting endpoints for virtual machines can be found at:

http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/virtual-machines-set-up-endpoints/

Microsoft Azure shares many commonalities with Office 365. When you sign up you are given a default .onmicrosoft.com domain but you can also add you own custom domain. here’s how to do just that.

Login to your Windows Azure portal at:

http://manage.windowsazure.com

From the menu on the left locate the Active Directory icon, which is near the bottom and select it.

You should then see a single entry called Default Directory displayed, select this.

From the menu that now appears across the top select DOMAINS. You’ll then see the above message indicating that you can add a custom domain.

Select ADD A CUSTOM DOMAIN.

In the field that appears, enter the custom domain you wish to use and then press the add button at the bottom.

You should now see a message at the top of the dialog saying that the domain has been successfully added.

Select the arrow in the bottom right to move to the next page in the process.

Much like Office 365 you’ll need to verify that you own this domain. You do that be adding a DNS record to your domain records and having Windows Azure verify it.

There are a number of verification options but the best is normally a simple TXT record. If you therefore select RECORD TYPE as TXT record at the top you’ll be provided with the DNS information you need to add to your domain.

You then got to the name records for you domain and add the supplied details to match the record selected in Windows Azure.

When you have updated your domain record return to Windows Azure and select the verify button at the bottom.

Windows Azure will then query the DNS records of your domain to verify that a matching record can be found. If so, you will receive a verification confirmation message at the top of the dialog as shown above.

Press the check mark in the lower right to complete the process.

You should now see the domain you just added listed in the domains option as shown above.

Again, much like Office 365 you can add multiple domains to Windows Azure as required.

With that done, now we can start utilizing this custom domain inside Windows Azure and I’ll cover that in upcoming blog posts.