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...

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...

So far in our Build Your Private Cloud in a Month series, we’ve prepared a scalable, resilient foundation and created our storage, network and compute fabric in System Center 2012 SP1 Virtual Machine Manager. Now …. we're ready to build some Private Clouds! In System Center 2012 SP1,...

Earlier in this Build Your Private Cloud in a Month article series, we defined Elasticity as an important property of a Private Cloud Fabric. Elasticity allows us to manage our Private Cloud as a flexible pool of resources that we can leverage to rapidly grow our datacenter capacity to meet new resource...

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...

When designing your virtualization ho st framework for your Private Cloud, it's important to select platforms that use widely supported standards and provide cost-effective solutions for elastically scaling a resilient compute foundation. With this criteria in check, you'll be able to grow your compute...

When planning network infrastructure for a Private Cloud, there’s a number of technologies to consider and leverage in Windows Server 2012 . At many of my events, IT Pros have lots of questions on when to use various network technologies in their overall Private Cloud design, such as: Teaming...

Yung Chou and I are back for another episode in our multi-part series on how to Build Your Private Cloud using System Center 2012 SP1 . Tune in today as we show how to deploy System Center 2012 SP1 Virtual Machine Manager AND upgrade from the VMM RTM release. We’ll walk through some of the key...

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...

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...

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...

In today's TechNet Radio show, we're discussing the new features in PC and mobile device management in the new wave of our cloud-based management solution: Windows Intune . We'll be chatting with Mark Williams , Senior Program Manager on the Windows Intune team, as we cover the following new capabilities...

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...

In previous articles in our 31 Days of Servers in the Cloud series, we’ve stepped through the process of building out various lab environments in the cloud, such as Windows Server 2012, SQL Server 2012, SharePoint 2013, Windows 8 App Dev and even Linux, on the Windows Azure cloud platform. ...

The Windows Azure Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) offering supports running Windows virtual machines and Linux virtual machines in the Cloud. In this article, I provide step-by-step guidance for running a new Linux virtual machine in the cloud using our Windows Azure platform. Linux? That’s...

Our Windows Azure cloud platform provides both Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) features for migrating and running virtual machines in the cloud and Platform as a Service (PaaS) features for developing new cloud-based applications. Together, these capabilities can be used by IT Pros and Developers...

Today, my friend and colleague, Yung Chou , has written a great article overviewing the features provided by the Windows Azure cloud platform. You can check out Yung’s article at: Windows Azure Features Overview One of the specific features that is a frequent topic of conversation at...

Windows Azure Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) offerings provide IT Pros with the ability to quickly and easily provision new Virtual Machines ( VMs running both Windows and Linux ) and Virtual Networks in the cloud. I’ve found that these capabilities can be really useful for a number of scenarios...

With Windows Azure, you can easily deploy and run Windows Server and Linux virtual machines on your own virtual network in the cloud. These capabilities can be really useful for several scenarios, such as: building virtual lab environments, piloting new software in the cloud, deploying hybrid IT applications...

This article is Part 2 in a two-part series on building a FREE Hyper-V Server 2012 Cluster to support highly available virtual machines as a foundation to a Private Cloud solution. If you missed it, be sure to check out Part 1 of this article series on the initial steps for building Hyper-V Server 2012...

UPDATE: By popular demand, these Hands On Labs have been extended to September 30th, 2012! Good news! Until September 30th, we are making available online over 100 of the most popular TechEd North America Hands-on Labs. Accessing the virtual environments and manuals is really easy ... Steps to...

This week, Mitch Tulloch and the Windows Server team have released a new updated version of the FREE e-Book for IT professionals: Introducing Windows Server 2012 RTM Edition. This book is a great way to get quickly skilled up on all the new improvements in this latest Windows Server - one of the most...