Evaluating BizTalk on Azure IaaS
General availability of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) support for Windows Azure was released this week. This means that you are able to run production applications on Virtual Machines hosted in Azure, backed by an enterprise SLA and supported by Microsoft Support. More info about the release can be found from Scott Guthrie's blog: https://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2013/04/16/windows-azure-general-availability-of-infrastructure-as-a-service-iaas.aspx
If you have BizTalk implementations currently running on-premise, you might want to evaluate how running them on Azure IaaS would help with your hosting challenges or cut operational costs. Starting up a single-server evaluation environment is super easy, and this is how it's done:
First, go to https://manage.windowsazure.com/ and sign in with your Microsoft Account that linked to your Azure subscription
- If you don't have a subscription you can sign up for a free trial at: https://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/pricing/free-trial/
- Also, if you are a MSDN subscriber, you get limited free access to Azure, read details about the benefits here: https://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/pricing/member-offers/msdn-benefits/
Click on "+ NEW" button located at the bottom left corner and select Compute -> Virtual Machine -> From Gallery
Step1 (of the creation process): Select the virtual machine image to be created, which in BizTalk's case means that you need to select the edition of the product
- Evaluation edition contains evaluation versions of both BizTalk 2013 and SQL Server 2012
- Standard and Enterprise editions contains BizTalk 2013 and are meant for scaled out (production) environments where SQL is installed in a separate virtual machine
- Important: Refer to Azure pricing page to learn the rates of different editions: https://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/pricing/details/virtual-machines/
- Also note that Visual Studio is not part of these images at this time
Step2: Enter virtual machine configuration
- Machine name for your virtual machine
- User name and password of the local user which will be created on the virtual machine automatically
- Select size of your machine
- Important: Refer to Azure pricing page to learn the rates of different sizes: https://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/pricing/details/virtual-machines/
Step3: Select virtual machine mode
- Enter DNS name of the virtual machine, this is the address which you will use to access the virtual machine
- Virtual machine needs an storage account which is used to store the virtual machine image (VHD files)
- If you don't have an existing storage account you want to use, you can have the creation process to generate one for you
- It's also good to note that using the storage will generate costs even if you shut down the virtual machine
- Select region where you want the virtual machine to run (selecting nearest datacenter minimizes possible network latencies)
Step4: Select additional options
- You can select an availability set to ensure availability of your application in case of hardware failures
- In most evaluation cases you can leave this to "(None)"
- More info about availability sets can be found from here: https://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/manage/windows/common-tasks/manage-vm-availability/
After completing the process, Azure starts provisioning of your virtual machine.
- You can see the status of the process by clicking the green bars in the right hand side of the bottom bar
- When the virtual machine is ready, you can start a Remote Desktop connection to the virtual machine by clicking the Connect icon in the bottom bar
- Use the credentials you provided in Step 2
You can also connect to your virtual machine without having to go through the Azure management portal.
- Remote Desktop endpoint is automatically created for you, you can find more info about endpoints here: https://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/manage/windows/how-to-guides/setup-endpoints/
- Go to the properties of your virtual machine and check the Remote Desktop port number from endpoint list
- Start a new remote desktop connection (Win + R -> mstsc)
- Enter the address you provided in Step 3 and public port defined in endpoint list
- Example: yourbiztalkserver.cloudapp.net:50144
- Use the credentials you provided in Step 2
When you have the Remote Desktop connection up and running..
- BizTalk tools are not pinned on taskbar or start menu, but you will find them in the Apps list (Win + Q)
- BizTalk is not configured by default, so you have to start by running the BizTalk Configuration tool
- Configuration is done by the same tool that you use on-premise, so you can refer to same documentation: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa561189(v=bts.80).aspx
(UPDATE: MSDN has also Azure specific documentation about BizTalk configuration: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj248689%28v=bts.80%29.aspx)
- When you have BizTalk configured you can start deploying your applications the same way you would do it on-premise (for example by importing MSI packages)