How-to: Azure On Premise with the Windows Azure Pack

In this blog post i will explain how to install the Azure Pack in your own datacenter.

But first what can you do with the Windows Azure Pack?

• Management portal for tenants – a customizable self-service portal for provisioning, monitoring, and managing services such as Web Site Clouds, Virtual Machine Clouds, and Service Bus Clouds.
• Management portal for administrators – a portal for administrators to configure and manage resource clouds, user accounts, and tenant offers, quotas, and pricing.
• Service management API – a REST API that helps enable a range of integration scenarios including custom portal and billing systems.
• Web Site Clouds – a service that helps provide a high-density, scalable shared web hosting platform for ASP.NET, PHP, and Node.js web applications. The Web Site Clouds service includes a customizable web application gallery of open source web applications and integration with source control systems for custom-developed web sites and applications.
• Virtual Machine Clouds – a service that provides infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) capabilities for Windows and Linux virtual machines. The Virtual Machine Clouds service includes a VM template gallery, scaling options, and virtual networking capabilities.
• Service Bus Clouds – a service that provides reliable messaging services between distributed applications. The Service Bus Clouds service includes queued and topic-based publish/subscribe capabilities.
• SQL and MySQL – services that provide database instances. These databases can be used in conjunction with the Web Sites service.
• Automation – the capability to automate and integrate additional custom services into the services framework, including a runbook editor and execution environment.

Now we will start with the installation of the Azure pack. Be sure you have minimum the following hardware & software

Hardware

• Windows Server® 2012 or Windows Server 2012 R2
• Microsoft Web Platform Installer 4.6
• Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack (SP) 1
• Internet Information Services (IIS) 8 (Windows Server® 2012) or IIS 8.5 (Windows Server 2012 R2)
• .NET Framework 4.5 Extended, with ASP.NET for Windows 8

First execute the following steps before installing the Azure Pack.

Disable Internet Explorer Enhanced Security Configuration (ESC) for Administrators (You can do this in the Server Manager)


Install the Web Platform Installer. For the moment 5.0 is the latest version. Web Platform Installer 5.0


Check if the following features are installed, in the following order

**Windows Server 2012
**a) Internet Information Services (IIS) recommended configuration in Server Manager


b) Enable Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 SP 1 in Server Manager (You can also install it with the Web Platform installer)


c) .NET Framework 4.5 Extended, with ASP.NET for Windows 8 (Use the Web Platform Installer)

**Windows Server 2012 R2
**a) Enable Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 SP 1 in Server Manager (You can also install it with the Web Platform installer)


b) .NET Framework 4.5 Extended, with ASP.NET for Windows 8 (Use the Web Platform Installer)

c) Internet Information Services (IIS) recommended configuration in Server Manager


Reboot the server. When you open the Web Platform Installer again, you see that all the components are installed.
Also Run “Windows Update” so you have all the latest updates.

Download now the Windows Azure Pack or select the “Windows Azure Pack: Portal and API Express” in the Web Platform Installer. Just like below.

This will install the following packages.

Select in the next screen the option “Use Microsoft Update when I check for Updates”


After the installation we can configure the Azure pack. Your browser will open with the following screen.
Just click the “Continue to this website” link.


You will get a Login screen, provide your administrator credentials


Now we will configure the Database to store all the information. You can use an external database or you can install SQL Server 2014 (express version is OK)


In the second screen you get the option to Participate in the help progam. Choose the option that you like the most.

In the third screen you can start the installation. After some time you should see the next screen.


Now browse to the following link https://localhost:30091/
You can also replace the localhost with your IP or computername. So you can access it onyour network.

Just login with your Administrator machine credentials. After that a Management Portal Tour will start.

Now you can start using Azure on premise

Note: To use some functionality, you need to install some extra packages. I will post some other blog posts about that….