The session I presented at TechEd 2013 North American on Windows Azure IaaS and BizTalk Server 2013 is now online ! I cover the new MSDN Benefits, using BizTalk with IaaS, creating a new Azure Virtual Machine Multi-Server Domain, and review some sample scenarios that are now possible with the pay-per-hour model. I am still working on some better PowerShell scripts to automate the domain creation.  I am about 90% of the way along.  I will post them shortly when they are better optimized...

Today in the key note at TechEd US Scott Guthrie made some exciting announcements related to Windows Azure Virtual Machines. Here are the highlights: Stopped Virtual Machines will no longer be charged Billing will now be pay per minute rather than by the hour MSDN Software for BizTalk, Visual Studios, SQL, SharePoint, etc. can now be ran on the Windows Azure Virtual Machines for Dev. / Test scenarios.  This means you can create your own custom corporate images if you do not want to use the pre...

With the release of BizTalk Server 2013 on Windows Azure Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) we have a new way to license BizTalk Server.  We can now license BizTalk Standard and Enterprise on a pay per hour basis.  This opens up a wide range of opportunities for dealing with short lived and bursting scenarios. What does I bill using these pay per hour features look like?  See below.  I used 3 hours of both a Standard and Enterprise edition of BizTalk Server.  Using the pay...

I was doing some BizTalk installations this weekend with BizTalk Server 2013 on Windows Server 2012 VM’s. I have done this before without any issues but in each case I already had Visual Studios 2012 installed on the server. This time I was doing a Runtime Only installation.  I received an error when trying to install the Enterprise Single Sign-on component. The error I received was: The program can’t start because MSVCP100.dll is missing from your computer.  Try reinstalling the program...

Windows Azure Virtual Machines are the new IaaS offering from Windows Azure that allows for Virtual Machines in the Cloud.  Using Windows Azure Virtual Machines you have the ability to add additional Data Disks in addition to your core Operating System Disk to your Virtual Machines.  The number of disks you can add depends on the size of your Virtual Machine and range from 1 for an Extra Small VM to 16 for an Extra Large VM.  Data disks should be used for installing all your program...

If you are planning to attend TechEd North America this June in New Orleans, LA and are looking for information on BizTalk Server running in Windows Azure IaaS then my session is for you! With the general release of Windows Azure IaaS and BizTalk 2013 Pay-Per-Hour pricing yesterday I figured now is a great time to plug my session.  The abstract is below. Abstract: This session looks at the architecture of three new integration infrastructure scenarios that are made possible with BizTalk Server...

Today Microsoft released to General Availability the Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) side of Windows Azure.  This includes Virtual Machines and Virtual Networking.  Read complete details of the release here . This is a huge milestone for BizTalk’ers because with the GA release we now have available on a per-per-hour basis both BizTalk Server 2013 Standard and Enterprise Editions.  This opens up a whole new spectrum of scenarios using this per-per-use model.  We now have 3 new...

I have put together a quick 10 minute video that introduced Windows Azure IaaS and walks you through creating your first Windows Azure Virtual Machine! I put a lot of time into adding cool animations and fun dialog, or so I think. Download this video from BizTalkGurus.com or view on YouTube . Enjoy and let me know what you think!

Today Microsoft announced BizTalk Server 2013 is now Released to Manufacturing (RTM). The software is now available for download through MSDN in English only. Just do a search for "BizTalk 2013" to find it. This release brings new adapters, better Azure integration, enhanced SharePoint integration, support for SQL and Visual Studios 2012, and more. Enjoy!

Did you know you are charged for a Windows Azure Virtual Machine every hour it is deployed even if it is not running?  I would guess many people are not using their Virtual Machines at night when they sleep so shouldn’t we have a simple way to take them offline?  Wouldn’t it be nice to have a simple GUI interface to view Virtual Machines (VM) and Virtual Hard Disks (VHD)? This tool solves all those problems!  This tool can be used to easily reduce your monthly Windows Azure compute...

While I call this post “tricks” for deleting a Windows Azure Virtual Machine it really is not a trick.  It does require a little deeper understanding of how Windows Azure creates and hosts Virtual Machines in order to use the REST API to delete them. Let us start with some background.  When you use the Windows Azure Portal to create a new Virtual Machine, a hidden service is created for you that will host the virtual machine role.  This will allow more than one Role (i.e. Virtual Machine...

Windows Azure Virtual Machines now has a pre-built image for BizTalk Server 2013.  This will enable you to get up and running with BizTalk 2013 in just a few minutes.  Configuration is needed once you create a new virtual machine using this image. The pre-built Image includes the following: Windows Server 2012 SQL 2012 Visual Studios 2012 Professional RC (I think this does not support the Windows Azure SDK) BizTalk 2013 Beta Enterprise Edition I was able to create a new virtual machine...

I noticed today that the Platform Images for Windows Azure Virtual Machines has been updated to include a Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows Server 2012 Image for October. The great news is I re-tested installing BizTalk Server 2013 Beta on the new Windows Server 2012 Image and everything installed and is running without issues!  This time I used a Medium Virtual Machine as compared to the Small to do the initial software installation.  I noticed a huge difference in performance and installation...

A few days ago BizTalk 2013 Beta was announced and released for download .  The plan is to make this available as a Windows Azure Virtual Machine Image just like the CTP but it has not yet been released.  Since the prebuilt image is not available, I wanted to try to manually install BizTalk Server 2013 Beta on a Windows Azure Virtual Machine. I did the same thing with the BizTalk 2010 R2 CTP without any issues. Below is a quick overview of BizTalk 2013 and my experience trying to get this...

Let this go down in the record books… that today marks the First Annual Celebration of International Check Your Enterprise Single Sign-On Master Secret Key Day ! Picture this, it is 2 AM and you are sound asleep.  All of a sudden your work pager goes off.  The datacenter is flooded (why they had a datacenter in the basement is a whole other story) and you lost the Master BizTalk Server.  The power went off and backup initially failed so all the servers restarted.  Your other BizTalk...

Over the past few months I have been blogging a lot about the new Windows Azure Virtual Machines.  That is because I can see the huge impact on projects for having this type of infrastructure available literally at your fingertips – for pennies an hour.  Just yesterday I setup a full windows domain with 4 servers accessible worldwide in a matter of an hour or two. I wanted to highlight the general complexity I see at many client related to setting up a new Virtual Machine.  I created...

The Windows Azure Storage API now have the ability to do cross account, asynchronous blob transfers. This means it is no longer required to download the blob in order to upload it to a different Windows Azure account. You can read all about this here . Over the past few weeks I have been working with the Windows Azure Virtual Machine feature that is currently in preview mode. I talked in a past blog post and video about using the Gallery to create a BizTalk 2010 R2 CTP Virtual Machine. The HUGE value...

Currently the Windows Azure Management Portal is having some difficulty using the UI to create an Image from an existing Virtual Machine. You have two different options to create an Image without using the UI.  The two options are using the REST API or PowerShell.  The details of each approach our outlined below.  I have tested both approaches and was able to create an Image and use that Image to create a new Virtual Machine. Options 1:  Using Windows Azure REST API 1.  Sysprep...

Windows Azure has a few different, somewhat disjointed, toolsets available to create new artifacts and maintain existing ones.  The best known is the Web Portal.  Very quickly when working with the web portal you discover the portal is not able to do all the tasks needed to support development and maintenance.  This brings into play Windows Azure PowerShell Commands, a .Net SDK, and REST API.  If you are new to working with the Windows Azure REST API or if you are looking for...

Some enhancements were made this weekend to the Windows Azure Preview Portal.  With these enhancements is the addition of Service Bus features and I think the ability to create Containers inside a Storage Account.  I do not remember that being in place before. As it relates to Virtual Machines I noticed the following two changes: 1.  When you Capture An Image from an existing Virtual Machine you get a notice saying the Virtual Machine will be deleted. 2.  When you delete a DISK...