Azure Archives - Page 4 of 4

Free eBook: Enterprise Cloud Strategy

Together Microsoft Press and Microsoft Virtual Academy have a number of Free eBooks available for download. The latest released eBook is “Enterprise Cloud Strategy” written by Barry Briggs and Eduardo Kassner.

Enterprise Cloud Strategy outlines the benefits Enterprises can realize from adoption Microsoft Azure and the Cloud. Based on the authors real world experience they describe the details necessary to answer the most common questions Enterprises have on moving to the cloud.

The different download formats for the book are available on the Free eBooks from Microsoft Press page, along with the full catalog of other Free eBooks that have been published. For convenience, I’ve included the file download links below:

PDF for desktop & tablet (8.75 MB)

PDF for mobile (4.70 MB)

EPUB (6.41 MB)

Mobi for Kindle (15.7 MB)

This eBook is also available Free for Amazon Kindle as well!

Free ebook: Microsoft Azure Essentials: Fundamentals of Azure, Second Edition

This book focuses on providing essential information about the key services of Azure for developers and IT professionals who are new to cloud computing. Detailed, step-by-step demonstrations are included to help the reader understand how to get started with each of the key services. This material is useful not only for those who have no prior experience with Azure, but also for those who need a refresher and those who may be familiar with one area but not others. Each chapter is standalone; there is no requirement that you perform the hands-on demonstrations from previous chapters to understand any particular chapter.

Download the free eBook here.

How to: Resize hard disk in Azure Resource Manager (ARM)

Resizing a virtual hard disk in Azure Resource Manager is really easy to do through the Azure Managent Portal. In a few clicks you can extend the virtual hard disk size. Note that the VM should be turned off!! So you need to plan a maintenance window!!
You can also extend the virtual hard disk with PowerShell. In this example I’ve extended the data disk from 25 to 30 GB.


# Specify the VM
$VM = Get-AzureRmVM -ResourceGroupName MSS-DEMO -VMName MSS-DEMO-DC01
# Set the new size of the data disk
Set-AzureRmVMDataDisk -VM $VM -Name MSS-DEMO-DC01-20160801-100246 -DiskSizeInGB 30
# View the new size of the data disk(s)
$VM.StorageProfile.DataDisks
# Update the configuration in Azure
Update-AzureRmVM -VM $VM -ResourceGroupName MSS-DEMO

1.) Login to the Azure Management Portal
2.) Check the current size of the data disk. In my example 25 GB
3.) Start PowerShell and login to your Azure subscription
4.) Change the data disk to the new value
5.) Update the configuration to Azure
6.) Check the new size of the data disk with PowerShell or within the Azure Management Portal.
In my example the new size is 30 GB.

Microsoft Azure Cloud Services Overview

This dashboard gives you a overview of all the services within Microsoft Azure. When you select one of the services, you’ll get an URL to pricing, SLA, documentation and some more stuff. Very useful to understand the power of Microsoft Azure.

Download the Cloud Services Overview here

How to: Login to your Microsoft Azure Subscription using Powershell

Some features in Microsoft Azure can only be configured using Powershell. In this blogpost I’m going to login to my Microsoft Azure subscription usnign Powershell.

1.) First you’ve to install Azure PowerShell 1.0 from WebPI (http://aka.ms/webpi-azps)
2.) After the installation finished succesfull, start Azure PowerShell
3.) Now you’ve to login to the right subscription
Login-AzureRmAccount
4.) Login with a e-mailadres and password to access your subscription
5.) Install the Azure Powershell modules
Install-Module Azure
6.) Install the Azure PowerShell Resource Manager modules
Install-Module AzureRM
7.) Your done now!!

Free ebook: Microsoft System Center: Integrated Cloud Platform

Microsoft System Center: Integrated Cloud Platform
David Ziembicki and Mitch Tulloch, Series Editor
April 2014
80 pages

This book is organized by cloud type and begins with a short overview of the Cloud OS strategy from Microsoft and a high-level hybrid cloud architecture. It also covers the design and deployment of private cloud solutions using Windows and System Center to deliver the software-defined datacenter where storage, network, compute, and management are all virtualized and delivered by the Microsoft platform.

Download the PDF
Download the EPUB file
Download the Mobi for Kindle file

Microsoft Virtual Machine Converter 2.0

Microsoft® Virtual Machine Converter (MVMC) is a Microsoft-supported, stand-alone solution for the information technology (IT) pro or solution provider who wants to convert virtual machines and disks from VMware hosts to Hyper-V® hosts and Windows Azure™.

MVMC can be deployed with minimal dependencies. Because MVMC provides native support for Windows PowerShell®, it enables scripting and integration with data center automation workflows such as those authored and run within Microsoft System Center Orchestrator 2012 R2. It can also be invoked through the Windows PowerShell® command-line interface. The solution is simple to download, install, and use. In addition to the Windows PowerShell capability, MVMC provides a wizard-driven GUI to facilitate virtual machine conversion.

New Features in MVMC 2.0
MVMC 2.0 release of MVMC includes the following new features:
◾Converts virtual disks that are attached to a VMware virtual machine to virtual hard disks (VHDs) that can be uploaded to Windows Azure.
◾Provides native Windows PowerShell capability that enables scripting and integration into IT automation workflows.
Note The command-line interface (CLI) in MVMC 1.0 has been replaced by Windows PowerShell in MVMC 2.0.
◾Supports conversion and provisioning of Linux-based guest operating systems from VMware hosts to Hyper-V hosts. ◾Supports conversion of offline virtual machines.
◾Supports the new virtual hard disk format (VHDX) when converting and provisioning in Hyper-V in Windows Server® 2012 R2 and Windows Server 2012.
◾Supports conversion of virtual machines from VMware vSphere 5.5, VMware vSphere 5.1, and VMware vSphere 4.1 hosts Hyper-V virtual machines.
◾Supports Windows Server® 2012 R2, Windows Server® 2012, and Windows® 8 as guest operating systems that you can select for conversion.

Standard MVMC Features
In addition to the new features previously identified, MVMC provides the following functionality:
◾Converts and deploys virtual machines from VMware hosts to Hyper-V hosts on any of the following operating systems: ◾Windows Server® 2012 R2
◾Windows Server® 2012
◾Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1
◾Converts VMware virtual machines, virtual disks, and configurations for memory, virtual processor, and other virtual computing resources from the source to Hyper-V.
◾Adds virtual network interface cards (NICs) to the converted virtual machine on Hyper-V.
◾Supports conversion of virtual machines from VMware vSphere 5.5, VMware vSphere 5.0, and VMware vSphere 4.1 hosts to Hyper-V.
◾Has a wizard-driven GUI, which simplifies performing virtual machine conversions.
◾Uninstalls VMware Tools before online conversion (online only) to provide a clean way to migrate VMware-based virtual machines to Hyper-V.
Important MVMC takes a snapshot of the virtual machine that you are converting before you uninstall VMware Tools, and then shuts down the source machine to preserve state during conversion. The virtual machine is restored to its previous state after the source disks that are attached to the virtual machine are successfully copied to the machine where the conversion process is run. At that point, the source machine in VMware can be turned on, if required. Important MVMC does not uninstall VMware Tools in an offline conversion. Instead, it disables VMware services, drivers, and programs only for Windows Server guest operating systems. For file conversions with Linux guest operating systems, VMware Tools are not disabled or uninstalled. We highly recommend that you manually uninstall VMware Tools when you convert an offline virtual machine.
◾Supports Windows Server and Linux guest operating system conversion. For more details, see the section “Supported Configurations for Virtual Machine Conversion” in this guide.
◾Includes Windows PowerShell capability for offline conversions of VMware-based virtual hard disks (VMDK) to a Hyper-V–based virtual hard disk file format (.vhd file). Note The offline disk conversion does not include driver fixes.

You can download Microsoft Virtual Machine Converter 2.0 here

Microsoft Server Posterpedia Windows 8.1 App

Microsoft released an update in the Windows App Store for their Server Posterpedia App, including the new Hyper-V 2012 R2 posters and some design changes.

Server Posterpedia is an interactive app that uses technical posters as a reference for understanding Microsoft technologies. This app includes all the reference posters from different Microsoft Server Technologies such as Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V, Exchange or Windows Azure. The great thing about this App, you can not only checkout the different posters and zoom in, if you click on a specific topic for you get directly linked to the right TechNet article. This can help find some TechNet references really easy and fast.

Download the Posterpedia App in the Windows Store.