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. Are you virtualizing your servers? Yes, of course! Are you spending less time...

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...

Windows Azure Infrastructure Services launched on April 16th for production workloads, and we're already seeing tremendous interest around Several Key IT Pro Scenarios relating to off-site backup, disaster recovery and running key web application VMs in the cloud, such as SharePoint Server 2013. ...

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...

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...

TechEd is our premier technical conference for IT Professionals and Enterprise Developers, and this year Microsoft TechEd 2013 North America will be in New Orleans, LA on June 3rd-6th. I’ve attended almost every TechEd conference since 1997, and I’ve always found it to be a tremendously...

Windows Azure Infrastructure Services officially launched in April for supporting production Virtual Machine and Virtual Network workloads. Master the skills for leveraging Windows Azure as part of a hybrid cloud infrastructure and showcase your new knowledge to others in the "Early Experts” Cloud...

In this final portion of our Build Your Private Cloud in a Month series, Yung Chou and I show how to leverage System Center 2012 SP1 App Controller to manage a hybrid cloud environment that could consist of on-premises Private Clouds, Windows Azure Infrastructure Services , and hosted Service Provider...

Today, as part of our Build Your Private Cloud in a Month series, Yung Chou and I are extending our Private Cloud into a Hybrid Network Infrastructure with Windows Azure Infrastructure Services to provide our cloud fabric with the best of both worlds … the low-latency and high-bandwidth available in...

UPDATE: Exercise 3, Step 4 in this Step-by-Step Guide has been updated to include Cumulative Update 1 for System Center 2012 Configuration Manager SP1. - - - - - - - - - - System Center 2012 Configuration Manager SP1 ( “ConfigMgr 2012 SP1” ) offers lots of great new capabilities for...

Today, April 16th 2013, the Windows Azure team has announced that Windows Azure Infrasructure Services ( Virtual Machines and Virtual Networks ) has been released for General Availability ( GA ) for production workloads! You can read the full details of this formal announcement at: READ: Windows...

I’ve recently presented talks at a number of SharePoint-related conferences and events on practical approaches to deploying SharePoint on Windows Server 2012 and our FREE Hyper-V Server 2012 enterprise-grade bare-metal hypervisors ( on–premise ) as well as using Windows Azure VMs ( in the...

Windows Azure Active Directory ( WAAD ), a cloud-friendly REST-based implementation of Active Directory for identity management of cloud applications, is now generally available for production cloud apps as a FREE service. WAAD provides consistent centralized identity management for Microsoft Office...

Thanks for your interest in the Microsoft TechEd "Cloud Challenge" and Windows Azure Infrastructure Services ! This contest has ended , and we've selected winners for each prize below. Congratulations To Our Winners! Congratulations to our winners listed below! All winners have been individually...

Windows Azure Virtual Machines and Virtual Networks provides the ability to securely extend the network perimeter of our data center into the Windows Azure cloud platform for many useful scenarios – backup, disaster recovery, accelerated cloud storage, dev/test/pilot, remote access, Internet applications...

As IT Pros, we absolutely love building with new technology! This month, my fellow IT Pro Technical Evangelists and I have been working together on an article series for Migration and Deployment of Windows 8, Windows Server 2012, Windows Azure and System Center 2012 SP1 to help get you started. Many...

NEW HOURS! Based on popular demand, we've updated the hours for "Early Experts" Virtual Study Hall assistance - Fridays each week from 11AM to 1PM Eastern Time . - - - - - - - - - - There’s so many cool features to explore in the latest Windows infrastructure offerings that it’s hard...

Over the next several weeks, there’s lots of opportunities for getting hands-on experience with Window Azure Virtual Machines and Virtual Networks – both in-person and online! At the events below, you’ll learn about leveraging the Windows Azure cloud platform to build VMs and Virtual...

In addition to building Virtual Networks on the Windows Azure cloud fabric for running Virtual Machines in the cloud, we can also securely extend those virtual networks to on-premise devices in a couple ways: Cloud-to-Site IPsec VPN connectivity Essentially, this is a Site-to-Site IPsec VPN tunnel...

The high availability afforded by Windows Server 2012 Failover Clustering is a key ingredient for managing and maintaining business critical applications. To gain familiarity with What’s New in Failover Clustering in Windows Server 2012, this article will step through an overview of new capabilities...

Wow! There was a ton of interest yesterday at the CincyPowerShell User Group on automating the provisioning and management of Virtual Machines in the cloud using PowerShell and the new Windows Azure PowerShell Module! In this article, I’ve provided a copy of my presentation deck, session notes...

Big data is everywhere, and the cloud is no different! Windows Server 2012 can leverage the new Storage Spaces feature and integrated iSCSI Target Server role to provide SAN-like storage capabilities when presenting storage to other servers. When studying these features in Windows Server 2012, we can...

In this article, we’ll be continuing on in our “Early Experts” Cloud Quest lab scenario to add a Windows Server 2012 Replica Domain Controller ( DC ) to our cloud-based lab on the Windows Azure cloud platform. NOTE: This Step-by-Step guide builds on the cloud-based lab configuration...

Extending an on-premise Windows Server Active Directory ( AD ) infrastructure into the cloud is an important topic to consider when planning the migration or implementation of cloud-based applications. Many existing applications require Active Directory for authentication and identity management. When...

Often times, applications that we’re deploying to the cloud may expect Windows Server Active Directory to be present for authentication and identity management. With Windows Azure Virtual Machines and Virtual Networks , we can deploy Windows Server Active Directory on the Windows Azure cloud platform...