Demo ScriptWindows Azure Virtual Machine Roles

Lab version: 1.0.0

Last updated: 5/9/2023

CONTENTS

OVERVIEW................................................................................................................................................. 3Key Messages......................................................................................................................................... 3

Key Technologies.................................................................................................................................... 3

Time Estimates........................................................................................................................................ 3

SETUP AND CONFIGURATION................................................................................................................. 4

DEMO FLOW.............................................................................................................................................. 4

OPENING STATEMENT............................................................................................................................. 5

STEP-BY-STEP WALKTHROUGH.............................................................................................................6Remote to a VM Role.............................................................................................................................. 6

Creating the VHD to be used with a VM Role........................................................................................10

Configuring a VM Role deployment.......................................................................................................13

SUMMARY................................................................................................................................................ 16

APPENDIX A............................................................................................................................................. 17

Overview

This document provides setup documentation, step-by-step instructions, and a written script for showing a demo of the new VM Role. This document can also serve as a tutorial or walkthrough of the technology. For additional Windows Azure demos, please visit http://www.azure.com.

Key Messages

In this demo you will see several key features and tools:

1. Remote desktop connection to a live VM Role running on Windows Azure.

2. How to use WIM2VHD to generate VHD’s from a Windows Installation DVD Image (iso file).

3. Windows Server 2008 R2 requires some setup before deploying as a VM Role.

4. How to configure the Service model for deploying a VM Role on Windows Azure.

Key Technologies

This demo uses the following technologies:

1. Windows Azure

2. Windows Azure SDK and Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio

3. Windows Server 2008R2

4. Hyper-V Server 2008R2

Time Estimates

Estimated time for setting up and configuring the demo: 30 min

Estimated time to complete the demo: 10 min

Setup and Configuration

Make sure you have checked all the dependencies for this demo before running the setup.

The setup and configuration for this demo involves the following tasks:

Setup your Windows Azure account

Deploy the provided solution

Demo Flow

The following diagram illustrates the high-level flow for this demo and the steps involved:

Figure 1Demo Flow

Opening Statement

In this session we are going to learn about the advantages of the Azure VM Role. We will examine a deployed machine connecting to it via remote desktop.

Also, you will learn the following three things:

1. You will see how two create a VHD to be hosted as VM Role.

2. You will learn how to upload the created disk to Windows Azure with a custom tool.

3. Finally you will configure a deployment using Visual Studio.

Step-by-Step Walkthrough

This demo is composed of the following segments:

Remote to a VM Role

Creating the VHD to be used with a VM Role

Configuring a VM Role deployment

Remote to a VM Role

Action Script Screenshot

1. Navigate to the Windows Azure Management Portal at http://windows.azure.com

2. Sign in with your live id.

One of the new featured we recently added to Windows Azure is the VM Role.

The VM Role functionality has been introduced to make the process of migrating existing Windows Server applications to Windows Azure easier and faster.

This is especially true for the migration of Windows Server applications that have long, non-scriptable or fragile installation

steps.

While the VM Role offers additional control and flexibility, the Windows Azure Web and Worker Roles offer additional benefits over the VM Role.

First, I’ll navigate to the Windows Azure portal and sign in.

3. Navigate to Hosted Services, Storage Accounts & CDN and open Hosted Services.

Within the portal, I’ll navigate to Hosted Services, Storage Accounts & CDN.

4. Select your VM Role from the list. Must be in Ready state.

5. Click Connect on the Ribbon.

I’ll now select my VM Role from the list, which must be in a ready state.

Once I’ve selected the role, I’ll click the Connect button. This will prompt me to download the Remote Desktop Connection download.

6. Download the Remote Desktop Connection file from the Management Portal.

While I can choose to Open the RDP file immediately, I can also click Save to re-use the connection later.

I’ll go ahead and click Open.

7. Click Connect in the Remote Desktop Connection dialog.

For security reasons, I’ll be prompted with a warning.

I can then click Connect.

8. In the Windows Security dialog, enter the credentials that you specified earlier when you configured the Remote Desktop connection for the role, and then click OK.

9. Wait until the connection is established.

10. Remote Desktop prompts you with a dialog warning that the identity of the remote computer cannot be verified. Click Yes to proceed.

I’m going to enter the security credentials that I created within the service model of my Windows Azure cloud services project.

Note that this is a local administrator on the VM Role instance.

11. Once authenticated, click Start Menu, and type “Services.msc” and press Enter to open the Services console.

12. Navigate to show Windows Azure services installed.

Now that I’m logged in, you can see the various services that are already running in the virtual machine.

Creating the VHD to be used with a VM Role

Action Script Screenshot

1. Open BuildWindowsAzureVHD.cmd located in the Assets folder with Notepad.

The very first thing we need to do is create the VHD we’ll use in the VM Role.

We will use the Windows Image to Virtual Hard Disk (WIM2VHD) command-line tool that allows you to create sysprepped VHD images from any installation source.

VHDs created by WIM2VHD will

bot directly to the Out Of Box Experience, ready for your first-use customizations.

Here is a script already defined that I’ll run to create the VHD.

2. Open Hyper-V Manager and connect to your Hyper -V Server.

3. Connect to an existing VM running Windows Server 2008 R2.

4. Click Media menu, point to DVD Drive and then select Insert Disk…

5. Select the wavmroleic.iso file to mount it.

6. On the VM, navigate to the DVD Drive and select the WaItregationComponents-x64.msi file.

Now, we’re going to use Hyper-V Manager to host the VM locally.

In order to use our VHD in Windows Azure, we need to install the Windows Azure Integration Components. Failure to do this will cause the image to not work correctly in Windows Azure.

I’ll set the ISO file to mount itself as a DVD drive in the VM, so that we can install it from within our VM.

Once in the VM, I can now browse to the virtual DVD Drive and install the integration components.

7. Open Sysprep (%windir%\system32\sysprep\sysprep.exe) tool and select the Generalize option on System Cleanup Action group. On Shutdown Options select Shutdown. Click OK.

Now that I have the integration components install, we need to Sysprep the VM.

Sysprep is the name of the Microsoft System Preparation Utility that “generalizes” the VM by generating a new computer name, a unique Security Identifer (SID), and cleaning various drive caches.

8. Open Upload_Prod.cmd file located in the Assets folder with notepad.

Now that the VM has shutdown, we’re ready to upload the VHD file into Windows Azure.

We will use CSUpload, which is a command-line tool that verifies and uploads a VHD file to Windows Storage. This tool also sets the relationships appropriate among the images.

Before running, I need to make sure that I’ve appropriate set my Subscription ID, certificateion, the location to which I’m uploading the VHD, and the path to the VHD itself.

Once confirmed, I’ll run the

script.

Configuring a VM Role deployment

Note: Currently, access to VM Role is available through an invite-only beta program. If you enroll in this program, you will receive instructions for enabling the required functionality in the Windows Azure Tools for Visual Studio; otherwise, you may not see the required menu option.

Action

Script Screenshot

1. Start Microsoft Visual Studio 2010.

2. Create a new Windows Azure Project. Set the name to MyVMRole.

3. Click OK in the New Windows Azure Project dialog without adding any role.

4. Right-click the Roles folder inside the MyVMRole project you just created, point to Add, and then select New Virtual Machine Role.

Creating and uploading the VHD is only the first step in preparing to use the VM Role.

For a VM Role instance to run in Windows Azure, we must also complete the service model by creating the service definition and service configuration files.

We’ll use Visual Studio to create the files and upload the package.

I’ll start by creating a brand new Windows Azure project without adding any roles – this is because the VM Role is not available as part of the new project wizard.

Once the solution is created, I’ll add a new VM Role from within

the project.

Notice that there are no additional projects associated with this

5. Double-click the VMRole1 role; on the properties windows select the Virtual Hard Disk tab.

6. Select your Windows Azure credentials on the Select or create your Windows Azure account credentials drop down list.

7. Select baseimage.vhd in the Select a VHD from your virtual machine role from Windows Azure storage drop down list.

Next we need to associate this project with the VHD we’ve uploaded into Windows Azure.

First, we’ll select our Windows Azure credentials from the drop down list. If these don’t already exist, we can create them as well.

After selecting our credentials, we can select our VHD from the drop down list.

8. Click on the Endpoints tab. Set the name to HttpIn, select input as Type, http as the Protocol and type 80 for Public and Private Port.

We will also create an endpoint for this role so that we can communicate across port 80.

We’ll specify a name of HttpIn, input as the Type, http as the protocol, and type 80 as the public and private port.

Having created this endpoint, we’ll later be able to access a web server running in the VM

Role instance.

9. Right-click the MyVMRole project and select Package. Check Enable Remote Desktop for all roles and complete the dialog with the requested information.

Before we deploy, let’s configure this VM Role instance with RDP credentials so that we can remote into the deployed instance.

On the Package Windows Azure Application dialog check Enable Remote Desktop for all roles.

Here we’ll need to select a certificate that’s both loaded locally in our certificate store but has also been associated with our VM Role instance in the Windows Azure portal.

We can also create our credentials for logging into the VM Role.

Define a user name, password, and an expiration date for the account (which, by default, is one month out).

10. Back in the Package Windows Azure Application dialog select Local as the Service Configuration.

11. Click Package.

Next, we need to create the service package that we’ll deploy to Windows Azure.

You can choose to deploy directly to Windows Azure, or manually deploy. We’ll choose the latter.

12. Deploy the package to your Windows Azure hosted service.

13. Once started on Windows Azure, click on the DNS name link (i.e. http://myvmrole.cloudapp.net)

We can now go up to the Windows Azure portal and deploy our package.

Once it has completed deploying, we can now browse to the VM Role instance through the HTTP endpoint we created.

Summary

In this demo, you saw how to connect with Remote Desktop to a VM Role, running on Windows Azure. Also you learned the basics for creating and deploying a clean Windows Server 2008 R2 image.

Appendix A

The initial VHD creation task can take about 15-20 minutes to be accomplished regarding the flow of the Demo. Because of this, the following high-level steps will guide you in the process, but is not intended to include this section as part of the final presentation.

You will need the following pre-requisites in order to execute the steps:

Windows Server 2008 R2 media (.iso file)

Unzip tool compatible with .iso files

WIN2VHD Converter (available from http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=155155)

Windows Azure SDK

Windows Azure Guest additions (.iso file) included in the SDK

CsUpload tool included in the SDK

1. Extract the contents of Windows Server 2008 R2 media to your disk. This can be done with any Unzip tool that reads standard .iso files. These files will be necessary to create the VHD image automatically.

2. Now, you will create the VHD using WIN2VHD tool. A script is used to run the tool and configure the required parameters. You can refer to the WIN2VHD tool documentation for detailed explanation about the script and its usage. You must replace the directories with the extracted media folder and the VHD destination folder. Notice that the disk type must be Fixed with an specific size.

CMDcscript wim2vhd.wsf /wim:C:\en-us_W2K8R2\sources\install.wim /sku:SERVERENTERPRISE /vhd:C:\ServerEnterprise.vhd /disktype:Fixed /size:20480

3. Once the disk is created, you need to create a new Virtual Machine on Hyper-V Manager and attach the VHD as the primary disk device. On the console, connect to your Hyper-V Server.

4. In Hyper-V Manager, right-click the server name, point to New, and then select Virtual Machine. Click Next at the welcome screen to start the New Virtual Machine Wizard.

5. In the Specify Name and Location step, set the name to VM Role and then click Next.

6. In the Assign Memory step, set the amount of memory to 2048 MB and then click Next.

7. Next, in the Configure Networking step, select Local Area Connection - Virtual Network and then click Next.

8. Now, in the Connect Virtual Disk step, select the option labeled Use an existing virtual hard disk and browse for the created VHD on step 2.

9. Review the selected options in the summary screen and click Finish to create the virtual machine.

10. In Hyper-V Manager, in the results pane, under Virtual Machines, right-click the name of the newly created virtual machine and then select Connect. In the toolbar of the Virtual Machine Connection window, click the Start icon.

Note: If Hyper-V manager does not list the virtual machine, you may need to right-click the server name and select Refresh.

11. When machine starts, you will need to finish the installation process. Windows will configure the system devices and will ask you to select the installation Language and set up the Administrator password.

12. Install the Web Server role on Server Manager. Optionally you can include ASP.NET feature.

13. Install the latest windows updates and turn off the Automatic Updates.

14. In the Virtual Machine Connection window, in the Media menu, point to DVD Drive and then select Insert Disk. In the Open dialog, browse to the location of the ISO file for the VM Role Integration Components, wavmroleic.iso, and then click Open.

15. Open the mounted drive, locate the WaIntegrationComponents-x64.msi file and double-click it to start the installation.

16. In the Operating System Configuration step, enter an Administrator Password, confirm it, and then click Next.

17. Click Install to begin the installation of the Integration Components.

18. When prompted to install device software, click Install to proceed.

19. Once the installation of the components has finished, you will be prompted to restart the system. Click Yes to continue.

20. Inside the VM, open the Start menu, type %windir%\system32\sysprep\sysprep.exe and then press Enter to launch the System Preparation Tool. Set the System Cleanup Action to “Enter System Out-of-Box Experience (OOBE)”, check the option labeled Generalize, set the Shutdown Options to Shutdown, and then press OK.

21. Wait for the system to completely shutdown. Your image is now ready for deployment.

22. Finally, you need to upload the VHD to the management portal. Open a Windows Azure SDK Command Prompt as an administrator from Start | All Programs | Windows Azure SDK v1.x.

23. At the command prompt, execute the following command line, where:

<YOUR-SUBSCRIPTION-ID> ID of your Windows Azure subscription that you obtain from the Management Portal

<YOUR- CERTIFICATE-THUMBPRINT> Thumbprint of the management certificate that you can generate in Visual Studio and upload to the Management Portal.

<PATH-TO-VHD-FILE> Path to the disk image file, baseimage.vhd, that you built in Hyper-V.

<HOSTED-SERVICE-LOCATION> Windows Azure data center location where the hosted service will be deployed (choose from “East Asia”, “North Central US”, “North Europe”, “South Central US”, “Southeast Asia”, “West Europe”)

Windows Azure Command Prompt

csupload Add-VMImage -Connection "SubscriptionId=<YOUR-SUBSCRIPTION-ID>; CertificateThumbprint=<YOUR-CERTIFICATE-THUMBPRINT>" -Description "Base image Windows Server 2008 R2" -LiteralPath "<PATH-TO-VHD-FILE>" -Name baseimage.vhd -Location <HOSTED-SERVICE-LOCATION>

NOTE: You can use the –Affinitygroup parameter instead of the –Location parameter if you have an Affinity Group defined on your Windows Azure account.

24. Wait for the upload to complete, which may take several hours, if your connection is not very fast.

25. After completing the previous task, you now have a VM image deployed to your Windows Azure account. Now, you will create a service model and configure it to reference this image.

26. In Visual Studio, create a new Windows Azure Project. You may choose any language, Visual C# or Visual Basic, because you will only use Visual Studio to create the service model and generate the service package. Set the name of the project to MyVMRole, change the

location to the Source folder of the lab, ensure that the option labeled Create directory for solution is checked, and set the solution name to Begin. Click OK to create the project.

27. In the New Windows Azure Project dialog, click OK without adding any roles. You will create a Virtual Machine role in the following steps.

NOTE: Currently, access to VM Role is available through an invite-only beta program. If you enroll in this program, you will receive instructions for enabling the required functionality in the Windows Azure Tools for Visual Studio; otherwise, you may not see the required menu option.

28. Once the solution is created, right-click the Roles folder inside the MyVMRole project, point to Add, and then select New Virtual Machine Role.

29. In the properties window for the new role, select the Virtual Hard Disk tab. To show the window, expand the Roles node in Solution Explorer and then double-click the VMRole1 role.

30. Before you can choose an image to use for your VM Role, you need to configure Visual Studio to access your Windows Azure account. If you have used Visual Studio previously to deploy service packages to Windows Azure, you may already have created the required credentials.

31. Once you configure the credentials, choose them in the drop down list labeled Select or create your Windows Azure account credentials. After you do this, Visual Studio accesses your subscription and retrieves a list of available virtual machine images.

32. Expand the drop down list labeled Select VHD and choose the image named baseimage.vhd, which contains the installation of Window Server 2008 R2 Enterprise Edition that you uploaded earlier.

33. Next, configure the Remote Desktop connections for your role. To do this, right-click the MyVMRole cloud service project in Solution Explorer and select Package. In the Package Windows Azure Application dialog box, check Enable Remote Desktop for all roles.

34. Expand the drop down list labeled Create or select a certificate to encrypt the user credentials and select Create.

35. In the Create Certificate dialog, enter a name to identify the certificate, for example, AzureRemote, and then click OK.

36. Now, back in the Remote Desktop Configuration dialog, choose the newly created certificate from the drop down list, enter the name of the user that you will use to connect remotely to your role–this can be any name of your choice–enter a password and confirm it, and leave the account expiration date unchanged.

37. Before you close the dialog, click View next to the certificate drop down list. In the Certificate dialog, switch to the Details tab and click Copy to File. Follow the wizard to export the certificate to a file, making sure that you choose the option to export the private key. Save the resulting file to a suitable location in your hard disk. You will need to upload this file to the Management Portal later, once you create a hosted service for your role.

38. Click OK to close the Remote Desktop Configuration dialog.

39. Finally, create a package to deploy your virtual machine role. To do this, click Package and then wait until Visual Studio creates it. Once the package is ready, Visual Studio opens a window showing the folder that contains the generated files.

40. At last, you need to upload the package to Windows Azure. This step concludes the preparation for running the demo. To begin navigate to Azure Management Portal and create a hosted service for your virtual machine role. To do this, select the Hosted Services, Storage Accounts & CDN tab followed by Hosted Services, and then click New Hosted Service on the ribbon.

In the Create a new Hosted Service dialog, enter a Service Name, for example, MyVMRole, and the URL that you wish to assign to the service. Remember that this URL is public, therefore, it needs to be unique and can only contain characters that are valid in a URL. The dialog validates the name as you type it and warns you if the name you choose has already been taken. Pick the region where you want to host the service from the drop down list labeled Choose a region and ensure that it is the same region where you uploaded the VM image in the previous task. Finally, in the Deploy pane, select the option labeled Do not deploy, and then click OK.

41. Upload the certificate used to encrypt the Remote Desktop password to the newly created service. To do this, expand the node for your hosted service to display and select the Certificates node and then click Add Certificate on the ribbon.

42. In the Upload an X.509 Certificate dialog, click Browse and navigate to the location where you stored the certificate for Remote Desktop that you created and exported during the previous task, enter the assigned password, confirm it, and then click Create.

43. Once you create the service, select it in the items pane of the Management Portal page, and then click New Production Deployment on the ribbon.

44. In the Create a new Deployment dialog, click Browse Locally next to the Package Location text box and then navigate to the location where Visual Studio generated the service package during the previous task. You should have a Windows Explorer window already open showing the correct location. Choose the service package file with a .cspkg extension and click Open. Repeat the same procedure to choose the Configuration File with a .cscfg extension in the same location. Finally, enter a label to identify your deployment, and click OK.

45. Once you start the deployment, you can monitor its progress in the Management Portal’s UI. Observe the various states that the deployment undergoes as the role starts up and initializes.

46. Wait until the status of the deployment is shown as Ready.