Visual checklist for Windows Azure Services

Thinking of installing Windows Azure Services for Windows Server or having some issues with your deployment?  Well here is a visual checklist to help you get the deployment going successfully.  The majority of the actual settings are focused on the SPF install,  the reason for this is that the portal really just front-ends the VMM requests so focus on how you have SPF installed will pay off.

If you are still trying to get your head around the product then have a look at the overview post on Windows Azure Services  

To begin with before anything happens with Windows Azure Services you need to have VMM working fully.  So what does that mean?

1. A cloud that is fully configured in terms of network, storage and Hypervisors
2. Be able to deploy VM's to a cloud (not a host, Windows Azure Services will only deploy to a cloud)
   
   
   
   
   

SPF needs to be installed and tested,  to test SPF enter the following 2 URL's into your browser.  In the two examples below I am using localhost so the test needs to be done local.  If you want to run this remotely then just enter the name of the SPF server instead of localhost.  If the result is successful you will see two XML screens, examples of which are below.

https://localhost:8090/SC2012/VMM/microsoft.management.odata.svc/

https://localhost:8090/SC2012/Admin/microsoft.management.odata.svc/

The  SPF VMM IIS Application Pool identity running as domain user (not network service account)

Configure the  SPF IIS web site to use  Basic Authentication

Create a local user on your SPF server, add it to the SPF local security groups and then use that local user to register the Service Management Portal

The SQL instance that you are deploying to must have SQL authentication enabled and the SPF Application Pool identity must have admin access  the SPF SQL DB and VMM

Just a note in terms of deploying this inside an enterprise environment is that its not supported to use the portal with an AD user that is in the same the domain as the VMM server.  The point is that at the time of writing (March 2013) the current version does not support an AD user so this is a moot point I think.

Thanks to Marc Umeno for this great advice at the MVP summit.