Windows Azure Pack – Part 2

So in Part 1 we looked at just simply installing the base “Windows Azure Pack“, in this post we will setup the core System Center Components. As we want to allow Virtual Machines to be provisioned, we need to install “System Center Virtual Machine Manager”, which has a dependency on the “Windows Assessment and Deployment Kit” which can be found here.

After installing this we will need to install the “System Center” components. We need to install the “Virtual Machine Manager” components first. Run the installer and select “Install”

As you run through the wizard, it will tell you things that need to be installed as a pre-requisite. The first one is mentioned above “Windows Assessment and Deployment Kit“, the second one depending on what you installed for the SQL Server piece, will be the “Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Command Line Utilities” which can be found here. Once installed you can then start completing the wizard installation. I used the following configuration.

Once it is completed it should have been successful.

Now we need to install the “System Center Orchestrator” components.

For my installation I used the following settings.

Id it fails the pre-requisite like mine did then simply select the option and continue the installation.

This should then completed the missing pre-requisite’s that are needed.

Once everything is installed and working you should then be able to load either the “Virtual Machine Console” or the “Runbook Designer” tools and they should load. A couple of SQL databases will have been created for this to work.

I suggest a quick reboot to make sure everything is clean and then also run windows updates to everything is at the right level with no missing updates or patches. Now let’s configure the “Virtual Machine Manager” so we can use it with our “Windows Azure Pack” setup. For me I had a pre-configuration step, as my “Hyper-V” server does not belong to my domain (right now), I had to install the “VMM Agent” so I can connect to it.

Right click the “All Hosts” navigation item and choose “Add Hyper-V Hosts and Clusters” menu link.

As my server is not on the domain I am going to choose the “Windows Server computers in a perimeter network” option.

It will ask you for various details, such as server name/IP Address, encryption key, the key file which if you are like me and installed the agent earlier then you need to copy the key file to the “VMM” server.

Click the “Add” button which will then display it in the bottom panel of the wizard. Then add any path locations that you want to put “Virtual Machines” when you create them using the “Virtual Machine Manager Console“.

Once done you should see your “Hyper-V” server in the console and your “Virtual Machines” should then be listed.

Now we have everything connected up, we need to copy a base “VHD“, a “Sysprep” image is best to use for this. I am using a base Server 2012 R2, “Sysprep” image disk for this. This file simply needs to be copied to the “VMM Library“.

To do this, simply copy the file to the library location, which for me is \\server\VMMLibrary\VHDs. Once copied this file should then be listed in your disks that are available to use.

Next we need to create a “Cloud”, from within the “Virtual Machine Manager” select the “Cloud” item, right click and choose “Create Cloud“. I used the following settings, nothing clever or special here.

Your cloud should now be listed in the console.

To complete the full cloud service, you would then create a separate “Virtual Network“, I used an existing one and then add “Hardware Profiles“. The “Hardware Profile” is created by selecting the “Library” navigation item, then expanding the “Profiles” item and choosing “Hardware Profiles“. Right click to create some profiles. We will create a “Small“, “Medium” and “Large” profile.

My profiles are set to the following.

 

These are just test profiles but you get the picture. Now we have those we need to create the “VM Templates” that we want to allow to show up in the “Windows Azure Portal“. Simply right click the “VM Templates” item and choose “Create VM Template“.

I created three templates to match the three hardware profiles I created earlier.

We can set all kinds of details about the server, that when it gets created will be applied.

Once they are created you should have a list that looks similar to this.

So after all that we are now ready to connect the “Virtual Machine” capability to our “Windows Azure Pack” that we configured in the last post.

The last step in this post is to go back to the “System Center 2012 R2” media and install the “Service Provider Foundation“. Simply run the installer and select the option.

You may need to install some dependencies until your checker looks like this.

Now specify the database server details as before.

You will need to specify the path location for the website as well as the certificate to be used, whether it is a self-signed or an issued certificate from a root authority.

Hopefully it will then complete successfully.

Now we are ready to configure everything together. Only other step I made was to ensure that the accounts used for the “Service Provider” were added to the “SPF” Security groups on the local server, this fixes any security issues for me.

We are now ready to configure the “Service Management Portal” and make everything work. Firstly let’s load the site using the following URL: https://{server}:30091

Once loaded click “VM Clouds“, which should load the dashboard with the following link.

To register the “System Center Service Provider” use the following details.

Once connected it should then display the following.

Now we need to add an existing cloud provider by selecting the “CLOUDS” option and choosing the following.

Make sure you use the “Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN)” for this.

Once this process has completed is should display the cloud service you now have.

So now to make “Virtual Machines” option work in the site, we now to either create a new plan for that, or append the existing plan to allow “Virtual Machines“.

Once the plan has been created, you will need to click into the plan using the arrow icon.

You should then see an error saying one or more services are not configured.

The one causing the error is the “Virtual Machine Clouds” one.

Click the arrow again and you are then able to resolve this issue. Set the values in the two dropdowns to the server listed in the dropdown, then set the cloud value.

Once done you can set the policies for the service.

Most importantly you can set the “Networks“, “Hardware Profiles” and “Templates” that can be sued. We will set the profiles and templates to the ones we created earlier.

Network

Hardware Profiles

Templates

We are then able to set the additional settings that can be performed for the “Virtual Machines“.

I set the values as the following.

Now going back and checking the hosting plan we should no errors.

So we should be good now to test. Let’s login to the tenant site https://{server}:30081, then login as a user that has the hosting plan associated to it.

Once the site loads I should then be able to create and manage Virtual Machines using the “Tenant Service Management Portal“.

Now we see all of our templates and can run through the configuration of the “Virtual Machine” or a “SQL Database“. In the next post we will run through the feature set and walk through each option.