Windows Azure Virtual Machine: Enhancing its availability

Now we have known all about the Windows Azure Virtual Machine, the infrastructure as a Service of the Microsoft Cloud Computing. In this post, you can find all the necessary explanation about the Images and Disks. After creating an image of the SharePoint Server on Windows Azure Virtual Machine. Here is how to create another Virtual Machine to get enhance the Availability of your applications.

The same first few steps are the same as creating the SharePoint on Windows Azure Virtual machine.

The next step, differs from the other a bit, we will connect the new created application to an existing Virtual Machine created before. (we already have created it in the first example).

In the next step, we will create a new availability set for our virtual machine.

Now we do have 2 Virtual Machines in the same availability set, this how you can enhance the availability of the virtual machine.

Windows Azure Virtual Machine: Scalability & Availability

We have introduced Windows Azure Virtual Machine as Microsoft Cloud Computing
infrastructure as a Service. Certainly you will have to have a Windows Azure Portal to work with it. One of the main features of Windows Azure Cloud Services on Windows Azure Virtual Machine is the Scalability. That doesn’t mean that Windows Azure Virtual Machine doesn’t allow scalable applications. For more information about the scalability I hope you can read about it in the Images and Disks blog post

For the availability, let’s first understand few things what is the Updated domains and the fault domains.

Fault Domain: mainly targets Hardware failures. For example you may have several instance on the same physical hardware resources, it is managed by the Fault Domain. This is to manage the high availability of the application just in case of the hardware failures.

Updated Domain: mainly is designed for the updates that goes for the virtual machines. When an update starts the updated or the upgraded domain (some people name it upgraded) makes sure that you will always have an instance of your application running while the other is being upgraded.

With the new General Availability that was released for both the Windows Azure Virtual machine and the Virtual Network, the SLA (service level agreement) offers 99.9% availability for the single instance of the Windows Azure Virtual Machine and 99.95% for the Availability Set (where you can create multiple Virtual Machine in it for the same tier).

Here is a good article that I do recommend you to read to get more information about this topic.

As we have previously created a Windows Azure Virtual machine from the SharePoint Images that already exists on the portal. Here is another example of how can you create another Virtual Machine to enhance your Virtual Machine availability.

Windows Azure Virtual machine: Build your own SharePoint Server.

Continuing on my previous blog posts here is one practical where you can start creating Windows Azure Virtual Machine, an image from the existing SharePoint Server. I chose SharePoint because it is a new image that has been added to the list of the images of Windows Azure Virtual Machine.

Now first of all go to your Windows Azure Portal and sign in.

Now let’s create new Virtual Machine as shown in the following image, we just create on the “New Button”, choose the “Virtual Machine” and “create from gallery”.

Now you will see a lot of images that you can create the disk from them. (Disks Vs. Images) In the following example we will go creating SharePoint 2013 Trial as shown in the picture.

The next steps is just simply like the Wizard, you will have to give the Virtual Machine a name, choose its size (as we are working with SharePoint we will choose the A6 VM Size). After that we will enter the administrator credentials that we are willing to use later on to log in to our Virtual Machine.

The next step is to provide the required DNS Name, we will leave the storage account as it is. (Creating new Storage Account for it)

We will skip the last step the number 4 and we will click next.

After that we will find the SharePoint Server is being initializing and created, now it is just a matter of time to have the Virtual Machine created on Windows Azure, it will only take several minutes.

After the Virtual Machine is being created, we can go to its Dashboard, you will find the Connect button at the bottom of the page, if you click on it, a file will be downloaded to allow you for the RDP.

If you open the downloaded file you will have to enter the credentials previously entered while creating the Virtual Machine

Click on the Connect button.

Enter the required credentials now under the Administrator but with your username and password.

The last issue is to make sure that you allow the connection and the remote desktop to be done.

And Congratulations you have now access on the Virtual Machine created on Windows Azure.

Windows Azure Virtual Machine Disk and Images

With the release of Windows Azure Virtual Machine, the true meaning of the Cloud Computing
Infrastructure as a Service, you have to understand how it works so you can better develop and build better applications. In the following link, I have made some comparison between the Windows Azure Cloud Services and Windows Azure Virtual Machine. As in this post I will introduce Windows Azure Virtual Machine Disks and Images, I will also clarify how scalability works on the Virtual Machine and why Cloud Service is better in some cases.

First of all, let me clarify something that any Virtual Machine once created always run the SAN. I mean if you look on Amazon you will find them creating new SAN only for hosting the Virtual Machines on it (I am talking about Infrastructure as a Service not the platform where you can deploy your applications). If we are talking about Amazon you can find the SAN created and dedicated for these Virtual Machines called the S3. For Windows Azure, the Infrastructure as a Service or the Virtual Machine is based on Windows Azure Blob Storage. Each virtual machine has a certain number of disks where the data and the required applications are hosted, with maximum storage of 1 TB which is the maximum storage of a Windows Azure blob.

Talking about Windows Azure Virtual Machine images, let me just try to clarify it by an example. If you are well aware of the OOP, you write the class and then you can make several separate instances of it called the object. The same concept goes for the Windows Azure Images and Disks, you can have an image and you can create from it disks for your Virtual Machine. There are now several images created on the portal, you can check them they are related to Microsoft technology and non-Microsoft technologies too.

Now Talking about the Scalability the Windows Azure Virtual Machine has a maximum of 16 disks certainly that depends on the Virtual Machine Size, in other words as you increase the processing power of the Virtual Machine you will be able to attach more disks to it.  the extra small Virtual Machine has maximum of 1 Disk and the Extra Large Virtual Machine has 16 Disks with maximum storage capacity of 16 TB.  Now talking about the Windows Azure Cloud Service you will have the ability to scale the application as much as you need, not only 16 TB of storage.

Here is an example of how you can create a Virtual machine using an image already existing on the portal.

Windows Azure Virtual Machine

One of the major updates done on Windows Azure is the capability to build and deploy Virtual Machines on it, which gives Microsoft Cloud Computing solutions the true meaning of offering the Infrastructure as a Service. As you certainly know that the Cloud Computing is composed of main 3 layers, the Infrastructure as a Service, the Platform as a Service and the Software as a Service. Yes Windows Azure is Microsoft Solution for the Cloud Computing Platform but it also offers you the solution of Virtual Machine to get the ability to deploy your applications on the desired Operating system, this is the true meaning of the Infrastructure as a Service.

Once we started talking about the Infrastructure as a Service or Windows Azure Virtual machine, then the target segment is totally different, from developers to IT Pros.

Here are some blog post that I hope they will help you understand more about the Virtual Machine on Windows Azure. The Disks and Images, Virtual Machines Networks (coming soon) and Virtual Machine Scalability and Availability.

Integration with Windows Azure Cloud Services or previously known as the Compute PaaS (Compute Node)

Why Windows Azure Virtual machine and what are its advantages on the VMRole?

There are a lot of differences between both of them regarding the Storage for example, the Virtual Machine is based on persistent Storage. If the application goes down for any reason, the data will be available unlike the VMRole. In the Virtual Machines you will have the capability to add new VHD easily through the Cloud directly unlike the VM Role which will require to do these things offsite then deploy it to Windows Azure.

So IaaS or PaaS, I mean what you will choose if the Windows Azure Virtual Machine will give you all these things. You can find all these related issues in the following blog post.

Here is an example of how you can create a Virtual machine using an image already existing on the portal.

Windows Azure Cloud Service: VMRole

Explaining each type of the Cloud Services Roles separately. The Cloud Services has three types of roles the WebRole, WorkerRole and the VMRole.

As for each of the web role and worker role, each one of them require the developer to develop the application again from scratch. As for the pre-developed applications it requires a new type of roles the VMRole. This is simply a role where you can host the pre-developed application on it. Certainly you will also have to do the required configuration and the service definition to be able to host your application on the Cloud.

However, I wont need to continue a lot in the VM Role because simply it will retire and will no longer be available, you can migrate your existing VM Role to the Windows Azure Virtual Machine. Here is where you can find on migrating your existing VM Role to Windows Azure Virtual Machine.

Windows Azure Cloud Services: WebRole

Explaining each type of the Cloud Services Roles separately. The Cloud Services has three types of roles the WebRole, WorkerRole and the VMRole.

The WebRole is all what is related to your web application, no matter what programming language your application is developed with. You can start working with the webrole application from this blog post. Certainly you can make the required connection between your WebRole and WorkerRole using the Queue, WCF or even the Service Bus.

Each WebRole can be configured through the configuration and the service definition file. These 2 files configure and define the application and the virtual machine where this application will be host. For those who have worked before on Windows Azure Virtual machines, here is a simple example between why choosing Windows Azure Cloud Services, or the differences between the Windows Azure Virtual Machines and the Windows Azure Cloud Services.