Category: microsoft Azure

Azure – Personalize Company Branding ”; Previous Next When a company has many applications, they might want to have the company’s look and feel on the sign-in page of those applications. There could be several objectives behind this, including marketing. Companies that use Azure Active Directory for identity management can do it by customizing the appearance of the sign-in page. This feature is available for basic and premium editions of Azure Active Directory. You won’t find this in free edition. If you don’t have subscription to basic or premium edition you can have a free trial of premium edition. Active Free Trial of Azure Active Directory (ADD) Premium Edition Step 1 − Login to your Azure Management Portal. Step 2 − Go to Azure Active Directory you want to work with. Step 3 − Click on ‘Licenses’ tab from the top menu as shown in the following image. Step 4 − Click ‘Try Azure Active Directory Premium Now’ and it will be activated for that directory. Refresh your page as it might take a few seconds to update and show up on your portal. Once it is activated, you will see the plan under ‘Licenses’ tab. Customize Branding Before moving ahead, make sure that the images (logo, background, square background) you want to display on the sign-in page are of correct sizes and dimensions. If you don’t take care of this, you would waste your time uploading images and then ultimately you will find that branding changes are not done. Here are certain specifications − Image Size in kb Recommended Dimensions Maximum Dimensions Supported Format Logo 5-10 60-280 60-300 png/jpeg Square Logo 5-10 240-240 240-240 png/jpeg Square Logo Dark Theme 5-10 240-240 240-240 png/jpeg Sign-in page illustration 500 (300 recommended) 1420-1200 1420-1200 Png/jpeg/gif Step 1 − Go to the directory you want to work with. Step 2 − Click on ‘Configure’ tab from the top menu. Step 3 − Click ‘Customize Branding’ button. The following pop-up will appear. Step 4 − Enter the details and upload the images. Step 5 − Click Next and enter the details. After you are done, do look for the notifications at the bottom of the window to make sure that changes are accepted. In the following image, you can see a notification in red outline which shows that it wasn’t successful in a previous attempt and threw an error. If the changes are not accepted and an error occurs, click ‘Details’ button to find the cause. Usually this occurs when the size and dimension of images to be uploaded are not correct. Login with Customized Sign-in Page When you sign in to your organization’s application, you will see your logo, big illustration image and sign-in text on that page. For example, let’s sign in to Office 365 using organization’s account. Things to Consider Domain name should be active. It might take up to an hour for changes to appear on the sign-in page. To test, choose ‘in-private’ session of internet explorer (or corresponding session in other browser where cookies don’t affect your browsing). Print Page Previous Next Advertisements ”;

Microsoft Azure – Setting Up Alert Rules ”; Previous Next While monitoring a virtual machine we can see different metrics related to a virtual machine in Azure. Azure has also provisioned a way to alert the administrator of virtual machine when these metrics go above or below a specified limit through e-mail. Setting up an alert can be very useful in notifying the administrator about issues that require attention. Step 1 − Go to the ‘Monitoring’ section of your virtual machine. Step 2 − Select the metrics you want to set alert for. Step 3 − Select ‘Add Rule’ from the bottom. Step 4 − Enter the name for alert and enter other information. Step 5 − In the following screen that pops up, select condition. It can be greater than, less than or equal to. Step 6 − Enter the threshold value which will be in percentage. In this example, let’s enter 85 which means you will get an e-mail when utilization for processor of your virtual machine reaches the 85% average over the last 10 minutes. In addition to sending the alert e-mail to service administrator and co-administrators, you can receive alert in one more e-mail. You can set maximum 10 alerts for each subscription. Alerts can be sent to the administrator’s e-mail plus one more e-mail provided at the time of setting up an alert. Similarly, you can set alerts for other Azure services like web applications and mobile applications. Print Page Previous Next Advertisements ”;

Microsoft Azure – Backup & Recovery ”; Previous Next Azure backup can be used to backing up on-premise data in cloud. Data is stored in an encrypted mode. The following sections provide a detailed illustration of how to do it using Azure. In this process, we will first create a backup vault where our data will be stored and then see how data can be backed up from our on-premise computer. The backup agent which is installed on the computer, first encrypts the data and then sends it over the network to the storage place in Azure. Your data is completely safe and secure. Create Backup Vault Step 1 − Login into your management portal. Step 2 − At the bottom right corner, select New → Data Services → Recovery Services → Backup Vault → Quick Create. Step 3 − Enter the name of vault and select the region. It will be created and displayed in your management portal. Step 4 − Select the vault and click ‘Download Vault Credentials’ as shown in the following image. Step 5 − It will save a credential file on your computer. Step 6 − Now scroll down the same page in Azure and you will see three options under ‘Download Agent’. Select a suitable option. Let’s choose the third option in the list in this example. Step 7 − Agent’s setup will be saved on your computer. You will have to install it by following the wizard. There is nothing very specific in the installation process. Step 8 − At the end of the installation, you will see a button at the bottom of pop-up window ‘Proceed to Registration’. Click that button and the following screen will appear. Step 9 − First step is vault identification. Browse the credentials file on your computer which was saved in the last step. Step 10 − Next step in the registration wizard is choosing the encryption setting. You can enter your own passphrase or let the wizard generate it by itself. Here let’s choose ‘Generate Passphrase’. Step 11 − Browse for the location where you want to save the passphrase. Keeping this passphrase file safe is very important as you won’t be able to restore backups without it. Step 12 − Click on Next and the file will be saved on your selected location. Schedule a Backup After the wizard in the above section is finished, you will see the following program that was installed in the previous step, running on your computer. You will come across selecting the data folder from your computer you want to back up on Azure and the frequency of backup in this wizard. Step 1 − Click ‘Schedule Backup’ from the right panel. In this example, let’s select the data folder named ‘QServicesManagementSystem’. Follow the steps as pop up on the screen and are quite understandable. You are allowed to back up 3 times maximum and you can choose from daily and weekly frequency. Step 2 − In the following step, select how long you want to keep the backup in your online storage. Set it according to your need. Step 3 − You can choose the ‘Backup Now’ in the left panel of backup agent. It will save a copy of your data that very moment. Then you can see it in your management portal by selecting the backup vault and going to its dashboard. You can see in the following image that there is one item listed under ‘Jobs’ section as data has been backed up by selecting ‘backup now’. This section will display all the activities in backup task. Details of the backup schedule is displayed under ‘Status’ section. Step 4 − You can recover the data by selecting ‘Recover Data’ in backup agent and following the wizard. Print Page Previous Next Advertisements ”;

Microsoft Azure – Application Deployment ”; Previous Next In this chapter, we will discuss different ways of deploying an application on Windows Azure. When we say application, it can be a web application or a mobile application. Earlier web apps were called websites, but now everywhere they are referred as web applications. We will be discussing how to deploy applications from Visual Studio and management portal in the chapter ‘Websites’. Deploying a Web App from PowerShell To get started with the PowerShell, refer to ‘PowerShell’ chapter in the tutorial. In order to deploy a website from PowerShell you will need the deployment package. You can get this from your website developers or you if you are into web deployment you would know about creating a deployment package. In the following sections, first you will learn how to create a deployment package in Visual Studio and then using PowerShell cmdlets, you will deploy the package on Azure. Create a Deployment Package Step 1 − Go to your website in Visual Studio. Step 2 − Right-click on the name of the application in the solution explorer. Select ‘Publish’. Step 3 − Create a new profile by selecting ‘New Profile’ from the dropdown. Enter the name of the profile. There might be different options in dropdown depending on if the websites are published before from the same computer. Step 4 − On the next screen, choose ‘Web Deploy Package’ in Publish Method. Step 5 − Choose a path to store the deployment package. Enter the name of site and click Next. Step 6 − On the next screen, leave the defaults on and select ‘publish’. After it’s done, inside the folder in your chosen location, you will find a zip file which is what you need during deployment. Create a Website in Azure using PowerShell Step 1 − Enter the following cmdlets to create a website. Replace the highlighted part. This command is going to create a website in free subscription. You can change the subscription after the website is created. New-AzureWebsite -name “mydeploymentdemo” -location “East US” If cmdlet is successful, you will see all the information as shown in the above image. You can see the URL of your website as in this example it is mydeploymentdemo.azurewebsites.net. Step 2 − You can visit the URL to make sure everything has gone right. Deploy Website using Deployment Package Once the website is created in Azure, you just need to copy your website’s code. Create the zip folder (deployment package) in your local computer. Step 1 − Enter the following cmdlets to deploy your website. Publish-AzureWebsiteProject -name “mydeploymentdemo” -package “C:UsersSahilDesktopdeploymentDemoMyWebsiteOnAzure.zip” Here in above commandlet, the name of the website just created is given and the path of the zip file on the computer. Step 2 − Go to your website’s URL. You can see the website as shown in the following image. Print Page Previous Next Advertisements ”;

Microsoft Azure – Scenarios ”; Previous Next Understanding the basic scenarios of Windows Azure will help us understand its use. Additionally, it will help us understand the services offered. Three basic scenarios are discussed here. In addition to the following scenarios, there can be many more ways of using Azure services based on the needs of clients, but all the basic uses are covered in this chapter. Software Development Software development is the most popular scenario of Windows Azure. The software is developed and tested on local development fabric and then deployed in cloud of Windows Azure. Azure hosts the web application and also the supporting processes, communicating with other web services. Testing of application in software development phase usually becomes too long for developers, if they need to change the configurations of environment being used to host the application. In Windows Azure, this is the not a problem as resources are absolutely in their control and can be modified as needed by the application. Once a web application is hosted in cloud of Windows Azure, it is ready to be used by the end users and organizations. Moreover, deploying the application is very easy in Windows Azure using the tools provided by them. These tools are MS deploy, PowerShell, integration with Team Foundation Server (TFS). The Visual Studio cloud project is also an easy option to deploy the application. An application is tested in the staging environment and then it is deployed in the production environment for end users to use it. Enterprise Process Offloading There are situations for an organization where they need to reduce loads from their onpremise systems for a certain period of time or on a regular basis. This could be easily achieved by using Windows Azure services at a very low cost. Clients have to pay for only those transactions made on their application instead of paying for entire hardware and software. This is an extremely cost-efficient way of using new resources for the organization. Azure in this context offers quite quick growth to businesses by extending resources on cloud when needed. Enterprise Application Integration This is commonly called as EAI scenario. Let us think of a scenario, when there is need for two different organizations to send and receive data between applications which is further processed by those applications. The cross-enterprise application integration can be done using Windows Azure. The service is called BizTalk service, which facilitates B2B messaging between on-premise or on-cloud applications of different organizations. This service enables a connection between applications even if they are following different transport protocols. The process also includes validating and extracting the properties as required by the application at the receiving end. In a normal scenario, where communication is needed between applications of two organizations, the interaction will have to bypass the firewall by completing the due process. However, in the service offered by Windows Azure, the communication between applications does not need to bypass the organization’s firewall. Print Page Previous Next Advertisements ”;

Azure – Self-Service Password Reset ”; Previous Next Users in your directory can be granted permission to reset their password, if they forget their password, in a few steps rather than having to ask the administrator to do so for them. This saves time and cost of the IT department or helpdesk dealing with such kind of tasks in an organization. Administrator can set the policy of resetting the password. This service is available in basic and premium edition of Azure Active Directory. In the chapter ‘Personalize Company Branding’ a small ‘how-to’ on getting a free trial of Azure Active Directory premium edition is included. Step 1 − Login to the management portal. Step 2 − Go to the active directory. Step 3 − Click on the ‘Configuration’ tab. Step 4 − Scroll down and locate ‘User Password Reset Policy’ heading. Step 5 − Click ‘Yes’ to enable users for password reset as shown in the following picture and scroll down to set the policy. Step 6 − You can choose to allow users to reset their password in certain groups. Step 7 − Refer to the image above; you have four options to choose from to authenticate the password reset. For example, let’s choose two of them here. Users in this case will be able to use their mobile phone or alternate e-mail address to verify the password reset. Step 8 − In ‘Number of Authentication Methods Required’ dropdown, if you choose 2 than users will have to provide two identification information (e.g. mobile phone and office phone). In this example, let’s leave it as one. Step 9 − Next option is whether you want them to register for self-password reset or not. If you choose ‘No’, the administrator will have to do it for each user individually. Step 10 − ‘Customize “Contact Your Administrator” link. You can give a specific webpage link or an e-mail id where the user can contact when he encounters a problem while resetting his password. Step 11 − Click ‘Save’ at the bottom of the screen. Next time when users login to access their account, they will be asked to register for password reset service where they can feed in their phone number or e-mail address. This information will be used when they forget/lose their password. In this example, as the policy set, they can choose from one of the options for verification code, through a call on their mobile phone, a text on their mobile phone or through an e-mail to an alternate email address. Print Page Previous Next Advertisements ”;

Microsoft Azure – Datacenters ”; Previous Next When we think of cloud, we imagine a place with large number of machines in big rooms. There must be a place where all the data is stored. Microsoft has datacenters all over the world from where Windows Azure services are managed. Datacenters are divided in regions. The exact location of these datacenters is not revealed by Microsoft for obvious security reasons. Following are the 20 listed regions as can also be seen in the image. Central US East US East US 2 US Gov Iowa US Gov Virginia North Central US South Central US West US North Europe West Europe East Asia Southeast Asia Japan East Japan West Brazil South Australia East Australia Southeast Central India South India How to Choose the Right Data Center for Your Application When creating Windows Azure application, whether it is mobile application, web application or database storage it asks to specify the region. Region here specifies a regional datacenter. Performance − You should select the nearest datacenter to the users of your application. The performance can be affected by the relative location of the users who want to access the application. If a user is closer to the datacenter, the performance will be better. Cost − The price of hosting the application may also increase or decrease depending upon the datacenter you choose. Price actually can vary according to the database hosting location or any other service being used by the application. You should choose the same location for all the services that are being used by your application. For example, database or any media service. If they are kept in separate datacenter there will be charges per transaction, but anything extra won’t be charged if they are kept at the same datacenter. Legal Aspect − Laws vary from country to country and restrictions could be enforced in some regions on what information can be shared and what cannot. Print Page Previous Next Advertisements ”;

Microsoft Azure – Monitoring Virtual Machines ”; Previous Next Monitoring virtual machines is important to keep a track of its performance and health. Windows Azure provides an interactive interface to monitor the statistics related to the performance of virtual machine. The five key statistics are − CPU percentage Disk Read Bytes/sec Disk Write Bytes/sec Network in Network out Monitor VM in Azure Management Portal. Step 1 − Login to Azure Management Portal. Step 2 − Go to Virtual Machine. Step 3 − Select the virtual machine you want to monitor. Step 4 − Select Monitor from the top menu as shown in following image. You can see 5 key terms on the above screen. It seems pretty complicated at first glance but when you look carefully, you can see that each line on the graph is in a different color which matches the color of the term. For example, CPU Percentage is in purple color and the purple line on the graph represents it. The machine shown in the above image is quite new. The following sections will explain how figures are read. CPU Percentage CPU percentage is the most common statistics to check whenever there is a performance issue in an application. It tells the processor’s utilization in percentage. In the following image, you can see that in the last dropdown at the right top corner 1 hour is selected and, highest utilization is at 3:15 which is 0.13%. Disk Read Bytes/Sec Another factor affecting performance is disk input/output operations. Disk read byte/second measures the amount of data read every second on the disk. If the read operations are done more frequently on the disk, performance issues can be resolved using a faster disk. Disk Write Bytes/sec Similarly, disk write byte/sec measures the amount of data written every second. If the application needs writing large amount of data on the disk, a bigger disk can be chosen. In the image above, you can see the highest point in disk read is 218.35 byte/sec at 3:25. You can see the last hour’s data because ‘1 Hour’ is selected in the dropdown. You can also see data for last 24 hours and 7 days. Network In Monitoring the network traffic can be done by looking at the ‘network in’ figures in the ‘Monitor’ section. The network-in statistics can be in bytes or TCP segments received. Network Out Network-out statics tells about TCP segments sent per second. You can also see relative or absolute statistics by selecting an option from dropdown encircled in the following image. Similarly, you can choose the duration from the dropdown highlighted in the following image. You can also choose particular metrics, by clicking on ‘Add Metrics’ at the bottom of the screen. The following screen will appear, in which you can check the desired metrics. Enable Diagnostics Enabling diagnostics allows you to collect logs. Azure will collect logs and store in a storage account you specified. We can enable diagnostics by switching to the ‘Preview Portal’. Diagnostic figures help in troubleshooting as the logs for errors can be tracked in the storage account. Step 1 − Switch to the ‘preview portal’. Step 2 − Locate the ‘Virtual Machine (classic)’ in the left panel. Step 3 − Select the Machine and ‘All Settings’. Step 4 − Scroll down and locate ‘Diagnostics’. Select ‘Diagnostic’ as shown in the following image. Step 5 − Select ‘On’ in the next panel displayed on the right side. By default it will be set off. Step 6 − Since it uses a storage account to store the logs you will have to configure the setting for the storage account by clicking on the encircled part in the following image. Step 7 − You can also select or deselect the type of logs you want to keep. You will also see a panel at the bottom with the heading ‘Monitoring’. This section displays the same metrics that we discussed in the section above. These figures help users to identify the causes of performance slide of an application. They can also generate alerts for these features; they go above the set limits. Print Page Previous Next Advertisements ”;

Microsoft Azure – Disk Caching ”; Previous Next We saw in the previous chapter ‘Disk Configuration’, how we had to choose cache preference for the disk we attached. By default it is ‘none’. We can choose read-only or read/write as per our requirements. This chapter will discuss how this setting affects the performance of input/output operations. Normally, cache settings make considerable improvement when read-write operations with large amount of data are done. However, if lot of random I/O operations are done, turning the cache off is preferable as operations on cache incur charges on the basis of number of transactions. Random operations will not make any signification improvement in performance. Read cache improves the performance, when data is read before, during input-output operations, and stored into cache. Also cache should be big enough to store all the data. For all the OS disks, in-memory caching is done by default unless it is turned off manually by the user. If lots of random I/O operations on files are done in OS disks, it is better to move them in a data disk where by default cache is turned off. Cache settings can be manipulated using PowerShell command lets, APIs and Azure management portal. We can set the cache from the management portal while creating virtual machines and data disks. Print Page Previous Next Advertisements ”;

Microsoft Azure – Queues ”; Previous Next In the common language used by developers, a queue is a data structure used to store data which follows First in-First out rule. A data item can be inserted from back of the queue while it is retrieved from front. Azure queues are a very similar concept that is used to store the messages in a queue. A sender sends the message and a client receives and processes them. A message has few attributes attached to it, for example expiry time. A client usually processes and deletes the message. Windows Azure service lets the message to be stored for 7 days and later it gets deleted automatically, if it is not deleted by the client. There can be one sender and one client or one sender and many clients or many sender and many clients. There are two services offered by Windows Azure for message queues. This chapter covers Windows Azure queue. The other service is called ‘Service Bus queue’. Decoupling the components is one of the advantages of message queue services. It runs in an asynchronous environment where messages can be sent among the different components of an application. Thus, it provides an efficient solution for managing workflows and tasks. For example, a message to complete a task is sent from the frontend of the application and is received by a backend worker, who then completes the task and deletes the message. Considerations The messages in the storage queue are not replicated anywhere, that means there is only one copy of your message. The maximum number of messages that can be processed are 20,000. The maximum size of a message can be 64 kb. Managing Queues using PowerShell Create a Queue Step 1 − Right-click on Windows PowerShell in the taskbar. Choose ‘Run ISE as administrator’. Step 2 − Run the following command to access your account. Please replace the highlighted part for your account. $context = New-AzureStorageContext -StorageAccountName tutorialspoint StorageAccountKey iUZNeeJD+ChFHt9XHL6D5rkKFWjzyW4FhV0iLyvweDi+Xtzfy76juPzJ+mWtDmbqCWjsu/nr+1pqBJj rdOO2+A== Step 3 − Specify the storage account in which you want to create a queue. Set-AzureSubscription –SubscriptionName “BizSpark” -CurrentStorageAccount tutorialspoint Step 4 − Create a Queue. $QueueName = “thisisaqueue” $Queue = New-AzureStorageQueue –Name $QueueName -Context $Ctx Retrieve a Queue $QueueName = “thisisaqueue” $Queue = Get-AzureStorageQueue –Name $QueueName –Context $Ctx Delete a Queue $QueueName = “thisisaqueue” Remove-AzureStorageQueue –Name $QueueName –Context $Ctx Insert a Message into a Queue Step 1 − Login to your account. $context = New-AzureStorageContext -StorageAccountName tutorialspoint StorageAccountKey iUZNeeJD+ChFHt9XHL6D5rkKFWjzyW4FhV0iLyvweDi+Xtzfy76juPzJ+mWtDmbqCWjsu/nr+1pqBJj rdOO2+A== Step 2 − Specify the storage account you want to use. Set-AzureSubscription –SubscriptionName “BizSpark” -CurrentStorageAccount tutorialspoint Step 3 − Retrieve the queue and then insert the message. $QueueName = “myqueue” $Queue = Get-AzureStorageQueue -Name $QueueName -Context $ctx if ($Queue -ne $null) { $QueueMessage = New-Object -TypeName Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Storage.Queue.CloudQueueMessage -ArgumentList “my message is this” $Queue.CloudQueue.AddMessage($QueueMessage) } The ‘if’ condition in the script above checks if the queue specified exists or not. Dequeue Next Message from Queue Step 1 − First connect to your account and specify the storage account, by running the commands as shown in the above steps. Step 2 − Retrieve the queue. $QueueName = “myqueue” $Queue = Get-AzureStorageQueue -Name $QueueName -Context $ctx $InvisibleTimeout = [System.TimeSpan]::FromSeconds(10) Step 3 − Dequeue the next message. $QueueMessage = $Queue.CloudQueue.GetMessage($InvisibleTimeout) Step 4 − Delete the dequeued message. $Queue.CloudQueue.DeleteMessage($QueueMessage) Managing Queues using Azure Storage Explorer Step 1 − Select the storage account from the dropdown at the top right. Accounts will be displayed if you have added them during your previous use. If not, you can add account and it will ask for your credentials. After signing in, you will be logged into your account in Azure Storage Explorer. Step 2 − You can add a new queue by selecting ‘Queues’ from the left panel and clicking ‘New’ as shown in the following image. Step 3 − Enter the name of Queue and it is created in your storage account. Step 4 − Add and delete the messages by selecting the queue in the left panel. Print Page Previous Next Advertisements ”;