Hybrid Cloud for Modern Enterprises |

Microsoft Azure Stack

Janaka Rangama Nirmal Thewarathanthri

Contents 1. Challenges in Hybrid Cloud ............................................................................................................... 3

2. Microsoft Azure Stack ....................................................................................................................... 4

2.1. Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 4

2.2. Azure Stack POC Architecture ............................................................................................. 4

2.3. Key Terminologies ............................................................................................................... 6

2.4. Scope & Limitations ............................................................................................................ 7

3. Deploying Microsoft Azure Stack TP1 ............................................................................................... 7

3.1. Pre-requisites ...................................................................................................................... 7

3.2. Deployment Guidelines ..................................................................................................... 10

4. Configuring the Environment .......................................................................................................... 14

4.1. Creating a Plan, Offer and a Subscription ......................................................................... 14

4.2. Creating your first VM in Azure Stack ............................................................................... 19

5. Deploying Resources in Microsoft Azure Stack TP1 ........................................................................ 20

5.1. ARM Templates ................................................................................................................. 20

5.2. Marketplace Items ............................................................................................................ 20

5.3. Tools & PaaS Services in TP1 ............................................................................................. 20

6. Additional Resources for Microsoft Azure Stack TP1...................................................................... 21

7. About the Authors .......................................................................................................................... 21

Janaka Rangama ............................................................................................................................ 21

Nirmal Thewarathanthri ............................................................................................................... 21

1. Challenges in Hybrid Cloud Modern businesses are rapidly moving into cloud platforms. IT departments which were once

considered as cost centers are now compelled to bring more value to the business by effective

strategies to minimize the data center foot print. In the last decade, virtualization was a key

enabler towards achieving reduced cost, increased performance and reduced deployment

timelines for multi-tiered Line of Business Applications.

Self-service capabilities for Anything-as-a-Service (XaaS) model have been improved with the

Private Cloud concept. A Private cloud is not merely a virtualized data center but it is rather an

end-to-end solution which provides simplified deployment, advanced monitoring, configuration

management, self-service, data protection and IT automation in a coordinated effort. Public Cloud

on the other hand provides more elasticity and scalability since there is no literal resource limit as

compared to running a hosted Private Cloud in your own data center/service provider facility.

In any business there are certain policies that govern the usage of Public Cloud. For an example

financial institutions need to keep customer data in a secure on-premises location to comply with

government regulations and to ensure client privacy. This doesn’t mean that Public Cloud is a no-

go for scenarios such as above but there has to be a proper model to leverage best of both worlds,

on-premises and public cloud. A Hybrid cloud uses a mix of on-premises private clouds and third-

party public cloud services which will allow the users to choose between where to host their

resources and how to orchestrate services between the two platforms.

There are some key challenges in implementing a true hybrid cloud eco-system. These serve as

key considerations and sometimes even as key barriers. An ideal hybrid cloud solution should be

able to address these concerns.

Capacity – On-premises data center resources are limited. This brings the question of how an

organization can effectively distribute workloads between two platforms, what are the key indices

to plan the growth in on-premises environment and how to minimize the depreciation of legacy

hardware.

Security – The security measurements in place for on-premises and public cloud can be different.

Your public cloud provider’s data center specification might not meet your on-premises security

controls. The question remains on how organizations can adapt a unified security approach for a

hybrid environment with minimal administrative effort.

Connectivity – This is one of the toughest challenges where most organizations are suffering in

their hybrid design approach. Extending your on-premises datacenter to the public cloud should

offer high speed data transfer capabilities for the deployed resources. In simple terms it should

feel, act and behave like a single LAN. Also the users should have access to both platforms with

the minimal effort whenever required.

Portability – One of the top priorities for organizations looking to implement a hybrid cloud

solution is the ability to “Lift & Shift”. Today this is not an easy task as this would require

application code level changes, hefty migration planning and results in complex design

inconsistencies most of the time.

Management – Most of the hybrid cloud solutions available in the market today lack the capability

to provide a unified management experience to the users. Switching between number of consoles

is a headache and time consuming. The need for unified management capabilities is also important

to reduce the user learning curve and adaptation.

2. Microsoft Azure Stack

2.1. Introduction The newest hybrid cloud platform by Microsoft, Microsoft Azure Stack (MAS) allows organizations

to deliver Azure services in their own data centers. This is an ideal solution for ISPs, Hosting

Providers and any enterprise with the need of an agile hybrid cloud environment. Microsoft Azure

Stack is designed with the same Azure user experience and it allows you to “Lift & Shift” your

Azure workloads to and from on-premises without the need for any architectural changes.

Imagine a scenario where the user data in you LOB has to be maintained within a company owned

datacenter while the front end and business logic needs to be in Azure. By leveraging Azure Stack

with Azure integration you can deploy a hybrid service with effectively while serving your

organizational security and data protection requirements.

This whitepaper focuses on the Microsoft Azure Stack Technical Preview 1 Incremental release

which is being available as a Proof of Concept (POC). The authors would like highlight the fact

that this POC environment purely for learning and demonstrating Azure Stack features not for

any production purposes.

Current deployment method installs all required components on a single physical machine where

it provides an ideal developer environment for evaluating concepts and capabilities, and

validating the Azure Stack extensibility model for APIs.

2.2. Azure Stack POC Architecture The MAS TP1 POC is a single host deployment with a limited set of Azure Services available as of

now. Following tools & services are currently supported in the POC.

Compute

Networking

Storage

Azure Resource Manager

PaaS Services (SQL, MySQL & Web Apps)

Custom Marketplace

Azure Stack GitHub Templates

Visual Studio Cloud Tools

Azure PowerShell SDK

Azure xPlat CLI

There are 9 Hyper-V VMs in total which will be deployed in the POC host that serve as the core

components of the Azure Stack environment. Following table provides a simplified explanation of

the role and task of each of these VMs/service.

Component Role

ADVM This VM hosts Active Directory, DNS, and DHCP services required for Microsoft Azure Stack.

ACSVM This VM hosts the Azure Consistent Storage services and they run on the Service Fabric on a dedicated virtual machine.

MuxVM Host VM for the Microsoft software load balancer component and network multiplexing services.

NCVM This VM contains Microsoft network controller component, integral part of Microsoft SDN stack and these services run on the Service Fabric on this dedicated virtual machine.

NATVM The Microsoft network address translation component which allows the outbound network connectivity from Microsoft Azure Stack is hosted in this VM.

xRPVM The core resource providers for MAS Compute, Network, and Storage are hosted in this VM.

SQLVM Fabric services such as ACS and xRP services uses the SQL server hosted in this Virtual machine.

PortalVM This Virtual machine contains the Control Plane (Azure Resource Manager), Azure portal services and various experiences (including services supporting admin experiences and tenant experiences).

ClientVM This is the front end VM for you to connect to the MAS Portal and here you can install PowerShell, Visual Studio, and other tools for further experiments.

ACS Blob Service Azure Consistent Storage Blob service, provides the storage capabilities for MAS (blob and table storage services). The key components of underlying storage technology that powers MAS storage provider include,

SoFS Scale-out File Server

ReFS CSV Resilient File System Cluster Shared Volume

Virtual Disk, Storage Space, and Storage Spaces Direct

Table 2.2.1 Components of Azure Stack POC

Following diagram depicts the high level architecture of Azure Stack Technical Preview 1 POC

Setup.

Figure 2.2.1 Azure Stack POC Architecture

2.3. Key Terminologies Before deploying Azure Stack POC it is useful to get an understanding with the buzz words in Azure

Stack.

2.3.1. Personas

A service administrator manages the Azure Stack environment. This role is responsible for

configuring and managing resource providers, tenant offers, plans, services, quotas, and

pricing.

A tenant represents a user in Azure Stack who purchases services that a service

administrator offers. A Tenant is able to provision, monitor, and manage services that they

have subscribed to (i.e Web Apps, Storage, and Virtual Machines).

2.3.2. Services, plans, offers, and subscriptions

In the Azure Stack service delivery model, Azure services are provided using subscriptions,

offers, and plans. A tenant can subscribe to multiple offers which may contain one or more

plans. Plans can include one or more services. (i.e. VMs, SQL PaaS)

Services

Services are the foundation blocks in MAS. These include a plethora of applications and services such as virtual machines, SQL Server databases, SharePoint, Exchange etc...

Plans

A plan contains one or more services and you can include these plans in your offers to your tenants. Any service included in a plan can have quota (capacity) allocated. For an example the number of CPU cores per VM, RAM can be restricted per subscription. Base plans are by default included in an offer when a tenant subscribes to that offer. There are also add-on plans which can be optionally included in an offer. These are additional plans (quotas) available in an offer that a subscription owner (tenant) can add to their subscription.

Offers An offer can contain one or more plans; which a tenant can subscribe to. An offer can contain plans from different regions as well. In an offer there can be a set of base plans plus optional add-on plans as well.

Subscriptions

A subscription is similar to your mobile plan. You as a tenant can buy a subscription which is a combination of a tenant with an offer. A tenant can have subscriptions to multiple offers and each subscription applies to only one offer. Basically subscriptions determine which plans/services a tenant can access.

2.3.3. Resource Groups

An Azure Resource Group is the atom of any Azure/Azure Stack deployment. A resource

group can contain multiple resource type within a single group such as VMS, VNets, Public

IPs, Storage Accounts etc…

Each resource can only belong to one resource group.

Plans and offers are managed as resource groups in Azure Stack.

All items in a resource group will be deployed, update and deleted together. If one

resource needs to exist on a different deployment cycle, it should belong to a

different resource group.

Adding or removing a resource to a resource group can be done at any time as well

as moving a resource from one resource group to another group.

Resources in a resource group can reside in different regions. In simple terms azure

resources can be geographically distinct.

Role Based Access Controls can be assigned to a resource group to scope access.

A resource can be linked to another resource in a different resource group as long

as they do not share the same lifecycle.

2.3.4. Resource Providers

Resource providers provide the foundation for any XaaS service available through Azure

Stack. There are there main resource providers in Azure Stack and you can create your

own custom RPs as well.

Compute Resource Provider

Computer Resource Provider (CRP) provides the foundation to create Virtual Machines in

Azure Stack including VM extensions to the tenants and administrators can configure this

resource provider to be used by the tenants.

Network Resource Provider

Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV)

capabilities are built-in in to Azure Stack on top of the Network Resource Provider (NRP).

These capabilities are the same as in Microsoft Azure so that when you leverage an ARM

template it can be deployed to both Azure & Azure Stack without further modifications. It

supports multiple control interfaces (including PowerShell, .NET SDK, Node.JS SDK, REST-

based API) and allows you to create software load balancers, public IPs, network security

groups, virtual networks etc…

Storage Resource Provider

This RP provides three Azure-consistent storage services, namely: blob, table, and account

management. Also it provides easy storage and retrieval of complex and large datatypes

such as unstructured data (i.e documents and media files with Azure Blobs) and structured

NoSQL based data with Azure Tables.

2.4. Scope & Limitations When deploying MAS POC keep in mind that there are certain limitations for this TP1 release.

These may differ when Azure Stack is generally available but at the time of writing this whitepaper

following serve as the scope of the POC.

The POC is not intended to be used for any production workloads and doesn’t provide

any high availability capabilities since it is deployed in a single host. This is a pre-release

package and Microsoft doesn’t guarantee any data consistency.

You can associate only a single Azure Active Directory tenant with a MAS deployment and

it is must to have an access to an active Azure subscription.

The single host POC may not have enough physical resources to provide scalability and

performance as expected in a production setup. Hence it is not advised to do any

comparison for same.

Only a single physical NIC is used in the POC. Therefore, advanced networking scenarios

are limited.

3. Deploying Microsoft Azure Stack TP1

3.1. Pre-requisites

Hardware Requirements

Azure Stack POC requires a significant amount of compute power. The reason behind this is that

the capabilities demonstrated in Azure Stack are actually deployed in large Azure Datacenters

and to squeeze that into a single host would require a solid and powerful environment. In our lab

we have used a Dell PowerEdge R710 Server as the host.

Component Minimum Recommended

Disk drives: Operating System

1 OS disk with minimum of 200 GB available for system partition (SSD or HDD)

1 OS disk with minimum of 200 GB available for system partition (SSD or HDD)

Disk drives: General Azure Stack POC Data

4+ disks. Each disk provides a minimum of 140 GB of capacity (SSD or HDD). All available disks will be used.

4+ disks. Each disk provides a minimum of 250 GB of capacity. All available disks will be used.

Compute: CPU Dual-Socket: 12 Physical Cores (total) Dual-Socket: 16 Physical Cores (total)

Compute: Memory

96 GB RAM 128 GB RAM

Compute: BIOS Hyper-V Enabled (with SLAT support) Hyper-V Enabled (with SLAT support)

Network: NIC Windows Server 2012 R2 Certification required for NIC; no specialized features required

Windows Server 2012 R2 Certification required for NIC; no specialized features required

HW logo certification

Certified for Windows Server 2012 R2 Certified for Windows Server 2012 R2

Table 3.1.1 Microsoft Azure Stack TP1 Hardware Requirements

Disk Requirements

Data disk drive configuration:

All data drives must be of the same type (all SAS or all SATA) and capacity. If SAS disk drives are used, the disk drives must be attached via a single path (no MPIO, multi-path support is provided)

HBA configuration options (Preferred) Simple HBA

RAID HBA – Adapter must be configured in “pass through” mode

RAID HBA – Disks should be configured as Single-Disk, RAID-0

Supported bus and media type combinations

SATA HDD SAS HDD RAID HDD RAID SSD (If the media type is unspecified/unknown*) SATA SSD + SATA HDD SAS SSD + SAS HDD

* RAID controllers without pass-through capability can’t recognize the media type. Such controllers will mark both HDD and SSD as Unspecified. In that case, the SSD will be used as persistent storage instead of caching devices. Therefore, you can deploy the Microsoft Azure Stack POC on those SSDs.

Example HBAs: LSI 9207-8i, LSI-9300-8i, or LSI-9265-8i in pass-through mode

Other Requirements

Component Requirement

Operating System

OS Version Windows Server 2016 Datacenter Edition Technical Preview 4 with the latest updates installed, including KB 3124262.

Install Method A clean install is required. You may use the WindowsServer2016Datacenter.vhdx provided in the MAS package. If not install the operating system manually, updates, and KB 3124262.

Domain joined? No

Azure Active Directory

At least one Azure AD account which is a directory administrator is required. The Azure Stack POC supports Azure Active Directory authentication only. This account will serve as the service administrator for MAS.

Create at least one account so that you can sign in to the Azure Stack POC as a tenant.

Azure Active Directory account Supported?

Organization ID with valid Public Azure Subscription Yes

Microsoft Account with valid Public Azure Subscription Yes

Organization ID with valid China Azure Subscription Yes

Organization ID with valid US Government Azure Subscription No

Network

Switch

One available port on a switch for the POC machine.

The Azure Stack POC supports connecting to a switch access port or trunk port. If you are using a trunk port or if you need to configure a VLAN ID, you have to provide the VLAN ID as a deployment parameter. For an example:

DeployAzureStack.ps1 –Verbose –PublicVLan 305

This parameter will set the VLAN ID for the host and NATVM only.

Subnet

POC host shouldn’t be connected to any of the below subnets.

192.168.200.0/24, 192.168.100.0/24, 192.168.133.0/24

These subnets are reserved for the internal networks within the Microsoft Azure Stack POC environment.

IPv4/IPv6 Only IPv4 is supported. You cannot create IPv6 networks.

DHCP

If there’s no DHCP server available in the network that the POC host resides in, you must prepare an additional static IPv4 network except the one used by host. You must provide that IP address and gateway as a deployment parameter. For an example:

DeployAzureStack.ps1 -Verbose -NATVMStaticIP 10.10.10.10/24 -NATVMStaticGateway 10.10.10.1

Internet Access

Make sure the NIC can connect to the Internet. Both the host IP and the new IP assigned to the NATVM (by DHCP or static IP) must be able to access Internet. Ports 80 and 443 are used under the graph.windows.net and login.windows.net domains.

Proxy If a proxy is required in your environment, specify the proxy server address and port as a deployment parameter. For an example:

DeployAzureStack.ps1 -Verbose -ProxyServer 172.11.1.1:8080

Azure Stack POC does not support proxy authentication.

Telemetry

Port 443 (HTTPS) must be open for your network. The client endpoint is https://vortex-win.data.microsoft.com

Table 2.1.2 Other requirements for deploying Azure Stack TP1 POC

3.2. Deployment Guidelines

Host Preparation

1. The POC host should meet the minimum requirements as described above. 2. Install Windows Server 2016 Datacenter Edition Technical Preview 4 EN-US (Full Edition) in

the POC host. 3. Download the Azure Stack POC kit to the C drive (i.e. C:\AzureStack) and execute the

Microsoft Azure Stack POC.exe file. This will create a folder \Microsoft Azure Stack POC\ with following content.

DeployAzureStack.ps1 Azure Stack POC installation PowerShell script MicrosoftAzureStackPOC.vhdx Azure Stack data package SQLServer2014.vhdx SQL Server VHD WindowsServer2012R2DatacenterEval.vhd WindowsServer2016Datacenter.vhdx Windows Server 2016 Datacenter VHD

(including KB 3124262)

Note: At least 128GB of free space on the physical boot volume should be available.

Figure 3.2.1 Contents of extracted Azure Stack package

4. Copy WindowsServer2016Datacenter.vhdx to the C:\ drive and rename it as MicrosoftAzureStackPOCBoot.vhdx.

5. In File Explorer, right-click MicrosoftAzureStackPOCBoot.vhdx and click Mount. 6. Start a CMD prompt as an administrator and below command which creates a dual boot

environment. When you boot the system hereafter you should select the first boot option.

bcdboot <mounted drive letter>:\windows

Figure 3.2.2 Editing boot volume

7. If you want to change the default boot drive to Azure Stack VHD, you can set it as default in the System Configuration dialog box. (Runmsconfig)

Figure 3.2.2 Setting default boot option

8. Reboot the host. This will automatically run Windows Setup and proceed with the installation. Make sure that you configure the correct time zone as well instead of GMT.

9. After the setup log on as a local administrator and verify that you can see four drives visible in the disk management which should be online and not in use.

10. The host should be in a workgroup and you should be able aces azure.com from the host. 11. For this POC only a single NIC is used and allowed. Before executing the deployment script in

the next section, make sure you disable the redundant NICs after you have booted and prepared the system from the VHD.

Figure 3.2.3 Disabling additional NICs

PowerShell Deployment Script

1. Open a PowerShell session as an administrator and traverse to the Azure Stack folder (in our case C:\Microsoft Azure Stack POC)

2. Execute the script as below.

.\DeployAzureStack.ps1 –Verbose

If you using Azure China region, use the following instead:

.\DeployAzureStack.ps1 –Verbose -UseAADChina $true This will kick start the POC installation and will be using the hardcoded Azure Stack POC domain name azurestack.local. The Verbose switch displays interactive information about the setup and hence recommended to be used.

3. At the Enter the password for the built-in administrator prompt, enter a password for the service admin account which will be used by all of the virtual machines. Keep this password recorded.

4. At the Please login to your Azure account in the pop-up Azure authentication page, hit any key to open the Microsoft Azure sign-in dialog box and provide your Azure AD global administrator credentials and click OK.

5. In PowerShell, press y to confirm your selection. This will create two users and three applications for Azure Stack in the Azure AD tenant: an admin user for Azure Stack, a tenant user for the TiP tests, and one application each for the Portal, API, and Monitoring resource providers. Additionally, the installer adds consents for the Azure PowerShell, XPlat CLI, and Visual Studio to that Directory Tenant.

6. At the Microsoft Azure Stack POC is ready to deploy. Continue? prompt, enter y to proceed. 7. It will take few hours to complete the deployment and the system will automatically reboot

several times. Each time after rebooting the setup will automatically launch a PowerShell window that will display deployment progress and the PowerShell window closes after deployment completes.

8. Once completed login to the Azure Stack POC host as AzureStack\administrator, open Server Manager, and turn off IE Enhanced Security Configuration for both admins and users.

9. You can find the setup logs in the POC host under C:\ProgramData\microsoft\azurestack.

Note: If the setup fails with a time or date error, configure the BIOS to use Local Time instead of UTC and try redeploying. If the script fails, restart the script. If it continues to fail, wipe and restart.

Useful Optional Parameters for DeployAzureSTack.ps1

Below optional parameters are mostly optional but you can further customize the installation

experience by using these.

Parameter Type Usage

AADCredential PSCredential This parameter sets the Azure Active Directory administrator user name and password. If you don’t use this, the script prompts for the user name and password.

AADTenant String This parameter sets the tenant directory. If the AAD administrator account has access to manage multiple directories as a global admin, use this parameter to specify which tenant you need to use.If this parameter is not provided, the script prompts for the directory.

AdminPassword SecureString This sets the default admin password for the POC setup. If not provided, the script prompts for the password.

Force Switch The script will run without confirmations. This will be ideal if you provide all the necessary parameters with the script.

NATVMStaticGateway String If DHCP can’t assign a valid IP address to access the Internet, use this parameter to set the default gateway used in the static IP address for the NATVM. If this parameter is used, then you must also use the NATVMStaticIP parameter. For an example, .\DeployAzureStack.ps1 –Verbose -NATVMStaticIP 10.10.10.10/24 – NATVMStaticGateway 10.10.10.1

NATVMStaticIP String Sets an additional static IP address for the NATVM and use this only when DHCP cannot assign a valid IP address to access the Internet. For an example, .\DeployAzureStack.ps1 –Verbose -

NATVMStaticIP 10.10.10.10/24

NoAutoReboot Switch When you provide this parameter it will allow the script to run without automatic reboots.

ProxyServer String If your environment must use a proxy to access the Internet, use this parameter to set the proxy information. Proxy servers that require credentials are not supported. For an example, .\DeployAzureStack.ps1 -Verbose -ProxyServer 172.11.1.1:8080

PublicVLan String In order to access the physical network (and Internet) in a VLAN environment the host and NATVM should be configured with the correct VLAN ID. This parameter sets the VLAN ID. For an example, .\DeployAzureStack.ps1 –Verbose –PublicVLan 305

TIPServiceAdminCredential PSCredential This parameter will set the credentials of an existing service administrator Azure Active Directory account to be used by TiP (Test in

Production). If this parameter is not provided, an account is automatically created.

TIPTenantAdminCredential PSCredential This parameter will set the credentials of an existing tenant administrator Azure Active Directory account that is used by TiP (Test in Production). If this parameter is not provided, an account is automatically created.

UseAADChina Boolean if you want to deploy the Microsoft Azure Stack POC with Azure China (Mooncake) use this parameter with the boolean value set to $true

Table 3 DeployAzureSTack.ps1 optional parameters

4. Configuring the Environment

4.1. Creating a Plan, Offer and a Subscription

Creating a Plan

Creation of plans allow to group one or more services and offer them to tenants. This allows

tenants to subscribe to available offers and use services offered by the service provider.

1. Open Azure Stack Portal as a Service Administrator.

Figure 4.1.1 Microsoft Azure Stack Portal

2. Click New Tenant Offers and Plans and then click Plan.

Figure 4.1.2 New Plan

3. Fill in Display Name and Resource Name – Display name needs to be a user friendly name

which will be visible to the Tenants. Resource Name is the Name used by the

Administrator within Azure Resource Manager.

Figure 4.1.3 New Plan blade

4. Select an existing Resource Group or create a New Resource Group.

5. Click on Offered Services – This option allows the administrator to select services offered

by the plan. Use SHIFT key to multi-select providers such as Compute, Storage and

Networking.

Figure 4.1.4 Selecting service offerings

6. Click on Microsoft.Compute and then select Needs Configuration.

7. Set Quota information which will allow the administrator to set restrictions on VMs, RAM

and CPU resources that can be consumed by tenants.

Figure 4.1.5 Microsoft.Compute RP configuration

8. Select Microsoft.Network and then select Needs Configuration.

9. Set Quota information and click OK.

Figure 4.1.6 Microsoft.Network RP configuration

10. Click on Microsoft.Storage and the click on Needs Configuration.

Figure 4.1.7 Microsoft.Storage RP configuration

11. Set required Quota information for Storage and then select OK.

12. Click on Create Plan to create the plan.

Creating an Offer

Offers allows administrator to group one or more Plans and present them to Tenants to subscribe.

1. Open Azure Stack Porta as a Service Administrator.

2. Click New Tenant Offers and Plans and then click on Offer.

Figure 4.1.8 New Offer

3. Provide values for Display Name and Resource Name in the New Offer Blade.

4. Select a new or existing Resource Group.

5. Click Base Plans and then in the plan section, select the plan that needs to be included as

part of the offer.

Figure 4.1.8 New Offer blade

6. Click Create to create the offer.

7. Change the state from Private to Public and the offer will be made available for Tenants

to be able to subscribe.

Figure 4.1.9 Change State in the plan

Subscribe to an offer

1. Open Azure Stack as a Tenant User.

2. Click Get a Subscription.

Figure 4.1.10 Get a Subscription blade

3. Provide a display name and then select an Offer.

4. To view the subscription, click on Browse and then click Subscriptions.

4.2. Creating your first VM in Azure Stack 1. Open Azure Stack Portal as a Tenant User and Click New

2. Click on Compute and select WindowsServer-2012-R2-Datacenter. This is the default image

included in the POC kit.

Figure 4.1.11 Select a VM image

3. Within the Basics blade provide specific details required by the VM creation process such as

Name, Username, Password and Resource Group.

4. Select an appropriate VM SKU.

Figure 4.1.12 Select VM SKU

5. In the Settings blade accept all defaults and click OK.

6. In the Summary blade click OK to create the VM.

Figure 4.1.13 Summary blade

5. Deploying Resources in Microsoft Azure Stack TP1

5.1. ARM Templates Azure Resource Manager Templates allows to provision all resources required by an application

using a single coordinated operation. Resources can be determined for the application before

being provisioned. These templates can be deployed using Azure Stack Portal, PowerShell,

Command Line or Visual Studio. Templates are available on GitHub.

5.2. Marketplace Items Marketplace offers a collection of items for Tenants such as Services, Applications and Resources.

Tenants use the marketplace when they create new resources and deploy new applications.

Service administrators can add/remove custom items to the market plans and these items will be

made available to tenants instantly.

5.3. Tools & PaaS Services in TP1

PaaS Services

Azure Stack provides capabilities to deploy PaaS services as well as IaaS Services from Microsoft

and from other 3rd party providers. At the moment following PaaS Services are available which

can be deployed and configured on top of Azure Stack Technical Preview 1.

SQL Server Resource Provider

MySQL Resource Provider

Web Apps Resource Provider

Visit Azure Stack documentation to find out how you can deploy and configure above additional

PaaS services.

Azure Stack Templates on GitHub

Azure Stack GitHub Templates provides a growing collection of Quick Start Azure Resource

Manager Templates that can help you to quickly start and run sample building blocks and

examples for Azure Stack. Visit below link to explore these templates.

https://github.com/Azure/AzureStack-QuickStart-Templates

Market item packaging Tool

Packaging Tool allows custom templates to be added to Azure Stack market places. Visit below

link to explore more.

http://www.aka.ms/azurestackmarketplaceitem

Developer Tools

Visual Studio Cloud Tools allows you to quickly build applications and deploy them to Azure Stack.

Azure PowerShell SDK allows cmdlets for managing Azure and Azure Stack using Windows

PowerShell. SDK can be used to create, test, deploy and manage resources within Azure Stack

platform as well as Azure Public cloud offering from Microsoft.

6. Additional Resources for Microsoft Azure Stack TP1 As we mentioned earlier, Azure Stack Technical Preview 1 is Proof-of-Concept. Therefore, when

you are trying out the capabilities you may come across certain issues, pitfalls and a good amount

of questions. Based on our experience with Azure Stack TP1 we have complied a list of resources

available that will help you to deploy and test the POC environment without a hassle.

Microsoft Azure Stack Documentation

Microsoft Azure Stack Forum

Known Issues, common pitfalls, tips and a FAQ for Microsoft Azure Stack

azurestack.eu blog by MVPs Mark Scholman & Ben Gelens

CDM MVP Daniel Neumann’s Blog

Azure Stack PM Charles Joy’s YouTube Channel

Azure Stack Quick Start Templates

Azure Resource Manager Documentation

7. About the Authors

Janaka Rangama Janaka Rangama is an Architect at VirtusaPolaris. He is a Microsoft

Certified Trainer, Microsoft Azure Architect & an Open Source

Enthusiast. Janaka is a Microsoft MVP in Cloud and Datacenter

Management and a Technical Evangelist at 5Nine Software Inc. As

one of the leading cloud experts in Sri Lanka, Janaka has been

certified from both Microsoft & Red Hat at the highest level. Janaka

is a community lead at Sri Lanka IT PRO Forum and a well-known

technical speaker in many international conferences. Visit his blog

http://tekronin.net or tweet him via @JanakaRangama

Nirmal Thewarathanthri Nirmal is a Technical Architect working for Empired Australia, with

many years of consultancy experience on Core IT Infrastructure

technologies. Nirmal is also a Microsoft Certified Trainer delivering

Trainings on Platform Infrastructure & Systems Management. Nirmal

has been a community lead of Sri Lanka IT PRO Forum since year

2006 and is a Microsoft MVP in Cloud and Datacenter Management

since 2011 and he is also a Technical Evangelist at 5Nine Software

Inc. You can reach Nirmal through his blog http://nirmalt.com or via

his twitter handle @nirmalmt