Tuesday, 12 June 2012 21:37

Virtual Machines in Windows Azure

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I think some of you are aware of the new features and enhancements to Windows Azure that were announced last Thursday during "Meet Windows Azure" event in San-Francisco. One of the new services Microsoft is offering in Windows Azure are Virtual Machines. You can now create Virtual Machines in Windows Azure the same way as you would on your laptop, desktop or server using Hyper-V or VMWare. The Virtual Machines in Azure are durable, meaning you can install anything within them and it persists across reboots. It also allows you to use any OS on them like Windows 2008 R2, 2012 RC, Linux ...

This new feature offers new possibilities for BizTalk developers as they can have a Virtual Machine up in the cloud to use for development or testing purposes. Now it would not suprise me that a BizTalk administrator in the near future will setup and manage these virtual machines in Azure. Creating a VM in Azure is pretty straight forward and something I have described in BizTalk IaaS solution: Provisioning Developer Environment. This will not be the only job an administrator can do. He/she will also create images of Virtual Machines, scale Virtual Machines (changing from medium to larger instance), monitor usage of resources through the portal, taking Virtual Machines offline (deleting them to reduce cost, stopping machines does not imply incurring no cost). If you like to learn more I suggest to go through manage overview of Windows Azure site.

If you have an account with Windows Azure you can try creating a VM or some other tasks by following the how to guides. These are easy to follow and give a sense on how the tasks should be performed. This way as administrator you can get some hands on experience of possible future asministrative tasks you may may need to perform. In case you do not have an account with Windows Azure you can sign up for a free trail at Windows Azure site. Other resources on this topic I would recommend to read are:

Update 14-06-2012, there are some more resource for Virtual Machine:

Cheers,

- Steef-Jan Wiggers

Read 1840 times Last modified on Thursday, 14 June 2012 15:55
Steef-Jan Wiggers

Steef-Jan is IT architect/Consultant with over 13 years of experience as a technical lead developer and application architect, specializing in custom applications, enterprise application integration (BizTalk), Web services and Windows Azure. He has experience in architecting, designing, developing, and supporting sophisticated and innovative software using many different Microsoft technologies and products. Steef-Jan is very active in BizTalk community as blogger, Wiki author/editor, forums, writer and public speaker. He has been awarded the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) award (2010) for his contributions to the world-wide BizTalk Server community. He has been re-awarded July 2011 and July 2012. On his personal blog he shares his knowledge around SOA, Azure AppFabric (ServiceBus) and BizTalk. His certifications are: MCSD, MCSD.NET, MCSA, MCDBA, MCAD, MCTS: BizTalk Server 2006, BizTalk Server 2006 R2 and BizTalk Server 2010. He has been acting as a technical reviewer for BizTalk Server 2010 Patterns book by Dan Rosanova and (MCTS): Microsoft BizTalk Server 2010 (70-595) Certification Guide by Kent Weare, Johan Hedberg, and Morten la Cour. Steef-Jan is author of the BizTalk Server 2010 Cookbook, published 5th of April 2012.

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Website: soa-thoughts.blogspot.com/

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