Highly Available SQL 2012 across Azure VNET (Part 1: VNET Peering)

1st of August, 2014 / / 1 Comment

Just over a year Microsoft announced the support of SQL Server AlwaysOn Availability Groups (AAG) on Microsoft Azure IaaS. Last month, Microsoft announced the support of SQL AAG between Azure Regions. This is a great news for great technology like SQL Server 2012 for highly available and disaster recovery scenario. SQL AAG released in SQL 2012 and enhanced in SQL 2014. AAG will detect anomaly which will impact SQL availability. When We will discuss how to do this in two blog posts:

  • Part1: Design SQL 2012 AAG across Azure VNET and How to create Microsoft Azure VNET to VNET peering
  • Part2: SQL, WSFC, Configure Quorum and Voting (SQL) and Configure AAG

Part1 SQL 2012 AAG across Azure VNET SQL 2012 AAG is designed to provide high availability for SQL database and Azure IaaS is great place where this technology can live.… [Keep reading] “Highly Available SQL 2012 across Azure VNET (Part 1: VNET Peering)”

Azure Mobile Services and the Internet of Things

30th of July, 2014 / / 11 Comments

The IT industry is full of buzzwords and “The Internet of Things” (IoT) is one that’s getting thrown about a lot lately. The IoT promises to connect billions of devices and sensors to the internet. How this data is stored, sorted, analysed and surfaced will determine the amount of value it is to your business. With this in mind I thought it’s time to start playing around with some bits and pieces to see if I could create my very own IoT connected array of sensors.… [Keep reading] “Azure Mobile Services and the Internet of Things”

Static DIP Request, VIP Reservation on Microsoft Azure

18th of July, 2014 / / No Comments

 

Firstly, what is Azure VIP (Virtual IP address) and DIP (internal IP address assigned by Azure DHCP) on Microsoft Azure?

Microsoft Azure VM has two known IP addresses:

  • VIP: Public IP address pointing to Azure Cloud Service where VM is deployed. Every Cloud Service has a VIP and every Cloud Service can have several VMs. A VIP assigned to Cloud Service won’t be released until last VM on that Cloud Service is Stopped (De-allocated)
    or Deleted
  • DIP: Internal IP address assigned to the VM by Azure DHCP.
… [Keep reading] “Static DIP Request, VIP Reservation on Microsoft Azure”

Microsoft Azure Cross Platform Command Line Step by Step

24th of June, 2014 / / No Comments

Microsoft Azure is not just about Windows, Microsoft Azure also supports Linux workloads. Spinning up Linux VMs in Microsoft’s fabric offers alternative options for open-source technologies with Microsoft Azure services.

Microsoft also provides Azure Cross-Platform Command-Line Interface (X-Plat CLI) which is a set of Open-Source, Cross-Platform commands for managing Microsoft Azure platform. X-Plat CLI has few top-level commands which correspond to different set of Microsoft Azure features. Typing “azure” will list each of the sub commands.… [Keep reading] “Microsoft Azure Cross Platform Command Line Step by Step”

Microsoft Antimalware for Azure is Now in Preview

14th of June, 2014 / / No Comments

Microsoft Antimalware for Azure Cloud Services and Virtual Machines is a new cloud service that detects and remove viruses, spyware, and other malicious software. Administrators can configure alerts to detect when malicious software attempts to install or run on a Microsoft Azure workload. The service is currently in preview.

I was really excited when I heard this new service announced at TechEd North America. Microsoft Antimalware for Azure addresses a major gap in the market. There is a legitimate need to protect IaaS and PaaS workloads running on Azure from viruses and other malware.… [Keep reading] “Microsoft Antimalware for Azure is Now in Preview”

Education institute improves productivity and reduces costs with Microsoft Azure and Office 365

12th of June, 2014 / / No Comments

Customer Overview
Principals Australia Institute (PAI) provides quality professional learning, leadership development and support to principals and school leaders. PAI’s programs and services help build effective, inspirational and sustainable leadership in Australia’s 10,000 government, Catholic and independent primary and secondary schools.

Business Situation
PAI expressed a desire to improve productivity, manage costs and reduce overall risk to its business. Kloud worked with PAI IT staff to provide a roadmap towards a set of IT reforms that delivered on these goals.… [Keep reading] “Education institute improves productivity and reduces costs with Microsoft Azure and Office 365”

Claims-Based Federation Service using Microsoft Azure

6th of June, 2014 / / 16 Comments

In this post I will discuss how you can setup Microsoft Azure to provide federation services with claims authentication in the same way that an Active Directory Federation Service (ADFS) farm would on-premises. This can be achieved with an Azure subscription, Access Control Services (ACS) and an Azure Active Directory (AAD) instance. The key benefit of using Azure SaaS is that Microsoft have taken care of all the high availability and load scaling configuration, therefor you have no need to manage multiple ADFS servers to gain the same desired functionality.… [Keep reading] “Claims-Based Federation Service using Microsoft Azure”

Downloading Azure Friday videos from Channel 9 with one line of PowerShell

23rd of May, 2014 / / No Comments

As it’s Friday, I’ve set myself the challenge of downloading all the Azure Friday videos from the Channel 9 website with a single line of PowerShell. If you’re not familiar with this fantastic series, Scott Hanselman talks to the actual engineers who build Microsoft Azure to discuss cloud development in small bite-sized episodes. It’s great, and soon you’ll be able to watch it offline from the comfort of your own mobile device.

Here goes.

First, I’ll need to get a catalogue of all the video titles and their corresponding download links. … [Keep reading] “Downloading Azure Friday videos from Channel 9 with one line of PowerShell”

How to install Magento on Azure Websites

23rd of May, 2014 / / 10 Comments

This blog explains in a step-by-step how to install (fresh install or migrate) a Magento package into Azure websites

Background

1. What is Magento?
Magento is an eCommerce software platform used by some of the world’s leading brands. More details could be found here on Magento.

2. Why install Magento on Azure?
There is a long list of reasons of why would somebody wants to migrate to the cloud, but few of these reasons could be 1) Cost saving 2) Load Balancing 3) Scalability 4) Less maintenance.… [Keep reading] “How to install Magento on Azure Websites”

Bad Request: Internal Load Balancer usage not allowed for this deployment

20th of May, 2014 / / 2 Comments

Microsoft released a number of new networking features for the Azure platform this week:

  • Multiple Site-to-Site VPNs
  • VNET-to-VNET Secure Connectivity
  • Reserved IPs
  • Instance level Public IPs
  • Internal Load Balancing

Announcement details can be found on Scott Gu’s blog post

Internal load balancing (ILB) was a much needed networking feature that will enable the design of highly available environments in hybrid infrastructure scenarios. Until now, 3rd party solutions were required to load balance workloads in IaaS virtual machines when accessed by on-premise (internal) clients across the site-to-site VPN.… [Keep reading] “Bad Request: Internal Load Balancer usage not allowed for this deployment”