Channel 9

Using Windows Azure to Build Pop-Up Labs in the Cloud: Cartoon

Planky — Sat, 13 Apr 2013 10:41:47 GMT

Although you might build say, a Sharepoint infrastructure in Windows Azure and leave it deployed as a permanent feature, totally integrated into your enterprise infrastructure, there are a growing number of organisations taking advantage of the temporary nature such infrastructures can have. Whether they need temporary access to a fully functioning IIS infrastructure, SQL infrastructure, AD infrastructure, System Center infrastructure or even a fully functioning, full-fidelity instance of one of their home-grown LOB enterprise apps - they can all be "popped up", used, then "popped down" again.

Whether you're an independent consultant who needs to replicate a problem at one of your clients, a small business that needs to run a training course for its employees or a large multi-national corporation that wants a dev/test environment that exactly mimics their production environment - pop-up labs can provide these services.

This video explains how in some cases, fairly extensive pop-up labs can be deployed for free and shows how they are so economically viable because they are only paid for when they are "popped up".

You'll see how to use Virtual Networks, Windows Azure Virtual Machines and Cloud Services to build your own pop-up labs.

Programming Windows Azure Active Directory

Planky — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 21:07:43 GMT

Windows Azure Active Directory (WAAD) now gives you Single-Sign-On to your apps, an API that allows you to both read and write data to the directory and you can even perform differential queries where only the changes since your last query are returned.

This video explains the concepts in cartoon-format and then shows a quick demo at the end of how to provision an application in to the directory.

Windows Azure Active Directory: Control Access to Windows Azure

Planky — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 15:01:37 GMT

Another cartoon format video plus demos, which shows how you can use Windows Azure Active Directory to create a team of users who can login and access the Windows Azure infrastructure; how you can set up 2-factor authentication for those with serious responsibilities, how to set up Dir-Sync between your on-premises Active Directory and Windows Azure Active Directory and finally how to set up federation between your on-premises Active Directory and Windows Azure Active Directory - giving a way of allowing your developers to use their corporate credentials to access Windows Azure and handing control of the cloud back to your enterprise administration.

Have fun with it - this is seriously cool technology!

Planky...

Windows Azure Active Directory Cartoon

Planky — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 19:35:27 GMT

Windows Azure Active Directory is described in cartoon format in this video. It's an easy to follow sketch of all the major pieces and how you can use it. It also describes the differences between Windows Azure Active Directory and Windows Server Active Directory.