UPDATED: Including the newly released Step-by-Step guides for implementing Windows Azure Virtual Network Site-to-Site VPN and Point-to-Site VPN hybrid networking in the list of linked resources in this study program.

My fellow Technical Evangelists and I have authored a content series that steps through building your very own Private Cloud by leveraging Windows Server 2012, our FREE Hyper-V Server 2012, Windows Azure Infrastructure Services ( IaaS ) and System Center 2012 Service Pack 1.  Week-by-week, we walk through the steps to envision, plan and implement your very own Private Cloud to take your existing data center to the next level and give you the tools and time back in your day for improving IT services and being able to change and shift with your business / IT needs.

In this article, I introduce this series and provide a weekly breakdown of each topic that we've written to help you build your own Private Cloud ...

UPDATE: At the end of this step-by-step article, I've also included a downloadable lab guide and a 130-line PowerShell script for initial provisioning.  The PowerShell script helps to reduce the initial configuration time by automating the provisioning of a new Windows Azure Storage account, Virtual Network and Virtual Machines - after running the script, you'll just need to Remote Desktop into each VM to finish the OS and application-level configuration tasks.  Hope you enjoy!

Now that SharePoint Server 2013 has been released, I frequently get asked about ways in which a SharePoint 2013 lab environment can be easily built for studying, testing, development, demos and/or performing a proof-of-concept.  You could certainly build this lab environment on your own hardware, but due to the level of SharePoint 2013 hardware requirements, a lot of us may not have sufficient spare hardware to implement an on-premise lab environment.

This makes a great scenario for leveraging our Windows Azure FREE 90-day Trial Offer to build a free lab environment for SharePoint 2013 in the cloud.  Using the process outlined in this article, you’ll be able to build a basic functional farm environment for SharePoint 2013 that will be accessible for approximately 105 hours of compute usage each month at no cost to you under the 90-day Trial Offer ...

UPDATE: I've updated this Guided Hands-on Lab to reflect the new Virtual Network capabilities that were launched with the General Availability announcement of Windows Azure, including support for a Windows Server 2012 On-premises VPN Gateway device.

This month, my fellow IT Pro Technical Evangelists and I are authoring a new articles series on 20 Key Scenarios with Windows Azure Infrastructure Services.  You can catch the full series at http://aka.ms/CloudTop20.  In today's article in this series, we'll discuss extending our On-premises Datacenter into a Hybrid Network Infrastructure with Windows Server 2012, Windows Azure Virtual Networks and Site-to-Site VPN Tunnels.

Windows Azure Virtual Networks offers the power to open up several cross-premises use case scenarios, including Active Directory Disaster Recovery, SQL Database Replication, Windows Server 2012 DFS-R File Replication, Accelerated Cloud File Services with BranchCache, Hybrid Web Applications and MORE!  But … we need to configure the Virtual Network FIRST … which is what this Guided Hands-on Lab is all about!

There’s LOTS going on in May and June for IT Pros in the US Heartland!

Below is a list of my upcoming events, most of which are FREE or low-cost opportunities for you to attend to learn about IT Pro news, topics and resources! Be sure to check back weekly as we add new events to the list ...

This month, my fellow IT Pro Technical Evangelists and I are authoring a new articles series on 20 Key Scenarios with Windows Azure Infrastructure Services.  You can catch the full series at http://aka.ms/CloudTop20.  In today's article in this series, we'll discuss accelerating content on cloud-based web and file servers using Windows Server 2012 BranchCache.  Once implemented, this solution can dramatically improve the user experience when accessing content servers in the cloud across high-latency, low-bandwidth Internet connections. 

Traditional file sharing protocols, such as Server Message Block ( SMB ) in Windows Server 2012, are primarily designed for low-latency, high-bandwidth scenarios commonly found in Local Area Networks ( LANs ).  When attempting to move file server workloads to the cloud, many IT Pros find that the unpredictable latency and limited bandwidth related to most Internet connections can make it challenging to deliver file services from the cloud in a reliable manner.

In this Step-by-Step article, I’ll walk through a configuration that leverages the BranchCache feature available in Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8 Enterprise.  Once implemented, BranchCache can solve cloud networking challenges by implementing a Wide Area File Services ( WAFS ) solution that caches frequently accessed data locally, either in a Distributed Cache across local clients or on a local Hosted Cache Server.

Lab Scenario: BranchCache Accelerating Content Access from the Cloud