Getting started with Microsoft Azure Stack (ASDK) (8)

After seven posts on how to get started with Microsoft Azure Stack/Azure Stack Development Kit, I think it’s finally time to share some additional resources that can help you on this amazing journey!

First (and the most important one… and the one that I already mentioned a few times) is the official documentation – hosted at docs.microsoft.com, regularly updated… with everything you need… just at the tip of your fingers! Amazing!

Next, there are two books I’ve been reading (feel free to leave a comment if you know any other book or resource I’ve missed) – the first one is Packt’s Building Hybrid Clouds with Azure Stack by Markus Klein and Susan Roesner (thank you, Ron!). The second book is Sams’ Microsoft Hybrid Cloud Unleashed with Azure Stack and Azure by Kerrie Meyler, Steve Buchanan, Mark Scholman, Jakob Gottlieb Svendsen and Janaka Rangama. Great books written by great authors!

Also, PluralSight is offering the short Microsoft Azure Stack: The Big Picture by Jason Helmick – totally free!

And if you plan to certify on Azure Stack – the official exam 70-537: Configuring and Operating a Hybrid Cloud with Microsoft Azure Stack is available
(accompanied by the official MOC, of course)!

Lastly – make also sure that you don’t miss Jeffrey’s inspiring talk!

Hope it helps!

Getting started with Microsoft Azure Stack (ASDK) (7)

One other important topic of running your Microsoft Azure Stack/ASDK environment is updating. You’ll need to update your deployment regularly to stay supported.

So… how do we do it?

First, you’ll download updates by using the provided Azure Stack Updates Downloader utility.

If you remember the following video, starting at 1:04, you could see the Downloader in action:

Next, you’ll unpack and upload the updates to your Stack deployment (to the updateadminaccount storage account, to be exact):

As the last step, Azure Stack will pick the info about uploaded updates and let you press the (magic) Update now button.

Then… we wait and our updates will be (magically) installed. And that’s it! Cool!

I’ve recorded a short video about this one as well:

Note, though, that updating of the nested Azure Stack/ASDK (i.e. installed inside of a virtual machine, either on Hyper-V, Azure or somewhere else) will probably not work… and this is perfectly fine (and expected)!

Cheers!

P.S. The whole YouTube playlist is available here.

Getting started with Microsoft Azure Stack (ASDK) (6)

Once you’re all set with preparing your Azure Stack/ASDK infrastructure, it’s time to let other users actually use it by forming tenants.

For this, you’ll first create a Plan which contains all the services a tenant is allowed to use with setting the appropriate Quotas on these services. Next, you’ll create an Offer consisting of the plan you just created (and any other you may have created earlier). With that, you can create a Subscription which will, finally, allow your user to consume Azure Stack/ASDK services (i.e. provision virtual machines and any other service you may have put in your plan).

I’ve made a short video about provisioning the above mentioned for my newly created [email protected] user:

Note that my user is using the “tenant portal” (https://portal.local.azurestack.external/) for provisioning its services, and not the “admin portal” (https://adminportal.local.azurestack.external/).

Cheers!