Azure

How to publish a remoteapp (Azure)

13 Feb, 2016 in Azure / BPOS & Office 365 / Office365 / Uncategorized tagged Azure / RemoteApp by Xander

In this article I describe how to publish a remoteapp using Microsoft Azure. First login to the Azure Portal using your (admin) creds and create a RemoteApp :

After you select the +NEW button use the following steps to create a RemoteApp:

Give a name, the region you wish the data to be stored and the plan details. Notice that by default there are 3 images to choose from. In this example who use the default available. In a later post I shall describe how to use your own images. After you click Create RemoteApp Collection, your RemoteApp Collection will be created. This can take a couple of minutes. When this task is finished you see something like this :

The name, status, address and other information is displayed. Double-click this bar.

You notice this screen:

You have several options : Dashboard (this page), User Access (control which users have access), Publishing (choose which applications to publish), Sessions (see the current sessions), Scale (scale your RemoteApp)

Click publish remoteapp programs!

Now you can choose from a list of programs installed in the image you choose before. Select any of them. You see the selected program being published. You can go to the publishing menu and you see al the Apps which are published as a RemoteApp.

It’s also an option to manually enter programs when you now the exact path or any one which is listed in the start menu. Ok! We are ready to go. Let’s download the Azure RemoteApp client here. After you have installed the client, let’s start the client! Login as the user you gave access to earlier. (users) and you see something like this :

Let’s start Visio for example :

The first time to application is set up (profile etc) and so it takes a bit langer to start the application.

Et voila Visio is started! You don’t see the difference between Visio installed locally or as a RemoteApp :

Using Azure to monitor website availability and responsiveness

3 Feb, 2016 in Azure / Uncategorized tagged Azure / Monitoring by Xander

In this blog post I describe how you easily can monitor the performance and the availability of a website. You need an Azure (trial-) account and Visual Studio Enterprise (or Ultimate). There are multiple options, but in this post I describe the URL ping test and the Multi-step web test.

The ping test is an easy way to start. From 5 multiple locations all over the world Azure send an ping to the specified website.

Ping Test

First login to your Windows Azure account. Make sure you’ve already created an Application Insight Resource. Check the following pictures how to create :

Create the Application Insight:

Specify a name and choose for ASP.NET

Go to your Application Insight Resource and Add a web test.

Specify a name, the URL ping test type and the test frequency. Make sure you add the http prefix to the url specification.

When you are ready wait when the test has been completed (this can take some time) go to your Application Insight Resource Tile.

Click the Availability Tile and check your results.

See the above example for the number of tests and the performance.

Multiple-step test

First make sure you have Visual Studio Enterprise 2015 Enterprise or Ultimate. Create a new project :

Choose a unique name and create a new project. Select the .webtest file and click the red record button.

Record the actions you wish to test and click stop when you’re finished.

Alright, test the file. And save the file. Now go Azure and choose to Add a web test :

Fill in the webtest name and upload the .webtest file.

All done. Now watch your Azure portal and see the new test appearing.

What is Microsoft Azure?

23 Jan, 2016 in Azure / Uncategorized tagged Azure by Xander

I found a nice presentation of the possibilities of Microsoft Azure.

Download it here.

Azure status

3 Dec, 2015 in Azure / Office365 / Uncategorized tagged Azure / Office365 by Xander

Between approximately 09:00 and 13:15 today, Office365 and Azure customers experienced issues accessing Azure services that use, or have dependencies on, Azure Active Directory. Check the current status here

Veeam FastSCP for Microsoft Azure

14 May, 2015 in Azure / Back-up / Uncategorized tagged Azure by Xander

Veeam has a new product/version of their FastSCP tool and I think it’s amazing!

First for this demo I’ve created a Windows 2012 R2 server on Azure :

Nothing new here, so let’s move on!

Download the beta of FastSCP for Azure here.

After a quick install (next-next-next) start the program :

After starting you see something like this :

Alright, we are going to Add the newly created machine, use the credentials you specified earlier :

And after a few seconds looking at something like this.. :

..we see something like this :

Select a file on any drive and try the Download Files button :

Specify the destination folder :

Go to the jobs section :

Et voila! You’ve just transferred your first file using FastSCP for Microsoft Azure.

Uploading works the other way around. Pretty amazing right?

VEEAM Backup to Azure (step by step)

2 Apr, 2015 in Azure / Back-up / Uncategorized / Veeam / VMware tagged Azure / Cloud Connect / Veeam by Xander

Use the following steps to configure Veeam Backup & Recovery to back-up the VM’s (Hyper-V and VMware) to Azure. You can sign up and use free trial licenses for Veeam (check out the banner on the right) and Azure. You only pay for the storage (3 ct for each Gigabyte and the network consumption for restoring a VM for 6 ct each Gigabyte. Uploading to Azure (to back-up) is free of charge)

First go to : https://portal.azure.com/

Hit the big + to create the Veeam Cloud Connect VM :

You have to fill in some information like the servername (without the @cloudapp.net) and the username and password. You will need this account to logon to this VM in the next step.

Now we are ready to create the Azure VM and it takes approx 30 min.

When the VM is ready logon to the console using the following interface :

Start the Veeam configurator using the icon on the desktop :

Now we have to upload a (trial?) license.

Veeam is so nice to describe the few configuration steps.

Now we are going to create a user. We need this user later on when configuring Veeam Backup & Recovery. Make sure this username and password is different than the account you created earlier.