Monthly Archives: January 2016

Shutdown and Startup Order for the Microsoft Azure Stack TP VMs

In my previous blog post I described how to install the Microsoft Azure Stack POC on lower hardware. Because my home lab does not run 24/7 I had to think about the correct shutdown and startup order for the Microsoft Azure Stack Technical Preview VMs. The Azure Stack TP consists of one physical Hyper-V host and 10 VMs. First I want to let you know which servers are belonging to the azurestack.local Read more [...]

Microsoft Azure Stack Technical Preview on lower hardware

If you are not in a lucky position like me and you want to run the Azure Stack Technical Preview, but you do not have the required hardware then keep reading. Microsoft had released the hardware requirements shortly before Christmas in 2015. Component Minimum Recommended CPU Dual-Socket: 12 Physical Cores Dual-Socket: 16 Physical Cores Memory 96 GB RAM 128 GB RAM BIOS Hyper-V Enabled (with Read more [...]

Microsoft Azure Stack Technical Preview – Custom ARM templates

When you have written custom ARM templates for your Azure deployments you can reuse them for the Azure Stack Technical Preview. There are only two things you have to look for. First one is the deployment location. Instead of specifying a region like northeurope or westeurope you can only set local for the Azure Stack TP. "location": { "type": "string", "defaultValue": "local", "allowedValues": Read more [...]

Microsoft Azure Stack Technical Preview Download is available

A few minutes ago Microsoft opened the download for the Microsoft Azure Stack Technical Preview! Taking the cloud to your datacenter and start using Azure Stack! -> https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/overview/azure-stack/try/ The documentation for the Azure Stack Technical Preview is also online now. -> https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/azure-stack-overview/ Last but Read more [...]

The first Microsoft Azure Stack Technical Preview is coming this week

Today Mike Neil, Corporate Vice President, Enterprise Cloud, announced that the first technical preview of Microsoft Azure Stack will be available on January 29. -> https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/announcing-the-first-technical-preview-of-microsoft-azure-stack/ You can sign up to get a notification when it is available and I highly recommend to do so! -> https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/overview/azure-stack/ Furthermore Read more [...]

Azure Security Center – keep your Azure VMs up to date

Actually the Azure Security Center is in public preview, but nevertheless it is a very useful extension to the existing Azure services. -> https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-security-center-now-available/ First of all you have to define the security policy for your subscription. Afterwards the Azure Security Center will install the data collection agents on your Azure VMs. Now you have Read more [...]

Azure IaaS ARM Template – Enable Boot Diagnostics per Default

One great thing Microsoft had introduced last year to the Azure platform was the boot diagnostics capability. Looking at an ARM template you can add the following lines to the VM definition to activate the boot diagnostics for your VM per default. "diagnosticsProfile": { "bootDiagnostics": { "enabled": "true", "storageUri": "[concat('http://',parameters('newStorageAccountName'),'.', Read more [...]

Azure IaaS ARM Template – Installing BGInfo VM Extension

When you want to install the BGInfo VM extension during the Azure VM deployment through an ARM template, then you have to add the following lines to your template. { "apiVersion": "2015-06-15", "type": "Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachines/extensions", "name": "[concat(variables('vmName'),'/', parameters('vmBGInfo'))]", "location": "[parameters('location')]", "dependsOn": [ Read more [...]