I came across the following resources that are found useful for planning SharePoint 2013 on Microsoft Azure. I thought of collating and making a post around this.

IOPS

Performance Considerations for SQL Server in Azure Virtual Machines

Performance Guidance for SQL Server in Windows Azure Virtual Machines

High Availability:

High Availability and Disaster Recovery for SQL Server in Windows Azure Virtual Machines

Approach with Custom Log shipping:

Deploying highly available SharePoint Internet Sites on Windows Azure Virtual Machines

Geo-DR for SQL Server on Windows Azure Infrastructure Services using Log Shipping

SharePoint 2013 on Windows Azure Infrastructure

SharePoint 2013 on Windows Azure Infrastructure Services

IOPS:

Performance Considerations for SQL Server in Azure Virtual Machines

Performance Guidance for SQL Server in Windows Azure Virtual Machines

High Availability

High Availability and Disaster Recovery for SQL Server in Windows Azure Virtual Machines

Approach with Custom Log shipping:

Deploying highly available SharePoint Internet Sites on Windows Azure Virtual Machines

Geo-DR for SQL Server on Windows Azure Infrastructure Services using Log Shipping

SharePoint 2013 on Windows Azure Infrastructure

SharePoint 2013 on Windows Azure Infrastructure Services

Authentication

Windows Azure Active Directory with SharePoint 2013

Internet Sites in Windows Azure using SharePoint Server 2013

Azure Compute and Storage Price Reductions

Windows Azure Active Directory with SharePoint 2013

Internet Sites in Windows Azure using SharePoint Server 2013

Azure Compute and Storage Price Reductions

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This post is the continuation to my previous post  – Deploying SharePoint 2013 on Microsoft Azure using IASS–part 1. The focus of the part2 of this series to cover the steps required to configure Domain Controllers (both Primary and Backup) in detail.

Configuration of Domain Controllers

Log on to the SP2013-DC1 VM (created in the Part1 of the article).

Server Manager àDashboard à Add Roles and Features.

Select Installation Type (set the default value of Role-based or feature-based installation).

Select Destination Server and Select a Server from the Server pool and click next.

Select Server Roles àActive Directory Domain Services and click Next

Now the Active Directory Domain Services are successfully installed in this Server SP 2013-DC1 and SP2013-DC2. We have already performed the step of initializing the Empty Disks. The next logical step is to perform activity of Promoting the SP2013-DC1 VM as the Domain Controller for the SharePoint 2013 farm that we are going to build.

Promotion of Virtual Machine to Domain Controller of the SP Farm

In this step, we would be performing the list of steps that are required to promote the Virtual Machine SP2013-DC1 as the Domain Controller of the SP Farm.

Server Manager à Manage link (on upper right hand corner) à Promote this server to a domain controller.

Deployment Configuration à Add a Forest

Set any arbitrary name for Root Domain name and Click next.

Set the Directory Services Restore Mode password as ‘Password123’.

We will get an error like ‘a delegation for the DNS cannot be found” and this can be ignored.

Additional Options à You will see the NetBios name reflected as the root domain name given in the previous step.

The next step is to set the path for Database folder, log files folder and SYSVOL folder.

Review all the selected options and Click next. We’ll see successful message for pre-requisites.

Click Install.

We’ll see a success message ‘The server was successfully configured as Domain Controller’. We need to create the set of Users (Service Accounts mentioned in the section 1b) in the Domain.

Server Manager à Tools à Active Directory Users and Computers.

Action à New à User.

Set the password as ‘password-1’ and make it as password never expire.

Repeat the above 2 steps for creating other service accounts like sp_farm_db, sp_install and sqlservice.

Provide domain admin rights for sp_install user.

Grant more rights to sp_install user.

On the domain name à Right click à Properties à Security à Advanced à

Advanced Security settings for domain à Select allow for Read all properties and Create computer objects.

This completes the setup of primary domain controller. We’ll set up the back-up domain controller in the next section.

Setup of back-up domain controller

In this section, we’ll see the necessary steps to configure back-up domain controller. The whole idea is that we’ll not be promoting the back-up DC (SP2013-DC2) as the domain controller for the farm, rather we will be adding the domain controller to the domain (techguru.com) running on primary domain controller VM (SP2013-DC1).

Click ‘Promote this server to Domain Controller’ and select ‘Add a domain controller to an existing domain’. Select credential techgurusp_install and the password for performing this operation.

Now we have successfully installed the domain controller. In the next post, we’ll cover the steps to configure SQL Server 2012 on Microsoft Azure for the SharePoint 2013.

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The objective of this article is to articulate the setup of SharePoint 2013 farm on Microsoft Azure platform using Infrastructure as a Service (IASS). Basically I  pretty much followed the steps mentioned in the MSDN article. I’m using Microsoft Azure trial subscription for the entire setup of SharePoint on Azure.

Configuration of Windows Azure Infrastructure components

The first step in setting up the SP 2013 Farm is to start provisioning the following three basic Network components and a Storage Account in the Azure Instance:

· One Virtual Network

· Four subnets

· Two DNS Servers

· One Windows Azure Storage account

On the lower-left corner, Click New à Virtual Network

Name for Virtual Network

Region: East Asia

Affinity Group: Create a new Affinity Group

On the DNS Servers type, type DNSServer1 and assign IP address as 10.0.0.4

On the DNS Servers type, type DNSServer2 and assign IP address as 10.0.0.5

On the Virtual Network Address Spaces, Click CIDR box to add subnet button. Add four subnets for each of the following

· DCSubnet (replaces Subnet-1), 10.0.0.0/11

· DataSubnet, 10.32.0.0/11

· AppSubnet, 10.64.0.0/11

· WebSubnet, 10.96.0.0/11

Now the virtual network is created.

Creation of Storage Account

The next step is to create Windows Azure Storage Account

Go to the Azure Management Portal.

New –> Data Services –> Storage and Quick Create

For the url enter name as “sundarsp”

Leave the default location/affinity group, which is selected as SundarAffinity.

Leave the default selection for Replication as ‘Geo-Redundant’ which will ensure the durability of the data.

Standards, Conventions and Limits

There are few conventions, standards and limits that I will be following throughout this article. It’s all again based on the msdn guidance.  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/azure/dn275966.aspx.

When it comes to the allocating empty disk space, a size of 20 GB will be allocated to Primary Domain Controller & Back-Up Domain Controller VM. An empty disk size of 50 GB will be allocated to Database Server and SharePoint Server VMs.

When it comes to Subnet creation, it is recommended to create four Subnets for different servers.

Availability Sets in Azure provides the capability to allocate Virtual Machines to different fault domains when a failure occurs. It increases availability and reliability. The recommendation is to create four Availability Sets as per the below conventions

We’ll be creating an Active Directory Domain by name ‘techguru.com’ (any arbitrary name that you can create for your need. I’ll also be creating the following set of Service Accounts on the techguru.com domain with a password of ‘password-1’ and password set as never expires.

Creation of Virtual Machines from Gallery

The creation of Virtual Machines typically involves the following five steps:-

1) Provisioning of Virtual Machine Instance

2) Creation and Attachment of empty disks

3) Initializing Empty Disks (The specification for empty disks are mentioned in the previous section 1.b)

4) Creation of Availability Set and its Associations for various VMs (The list of Availability Set are mentioned in the previous Section 1.b)

5) Logging into VM and perform initial setup activities

The following set of Virtual Machines need to be created for setting up the SP 2013 Farm. Since I’m having only the Trial version of Azure, I’m selecting only A2 VM with 2 cores of CPU. If you are setting the real Dev-Test SP 2013 environment for your customer on Azure, you need much more than that.

Creation of domain controller VM

New –> Compute –>Virtual Machine à from Gallery.

Select Virtual Machine operating system.

First, we’ll create a VM for Domain Controller and we’ll select Windows Server 2012 Data Center for Domain Controllers.

Set the password as ‘Pass@word1’.

Attach an empty disk of 20 GB to the Domain Controller VM and set it as Read/Write

Now we have attached the empty disk of 20 GB to the primary domain controller (sp2013-dc1) VM. The next step is to create Availability Set for the domain controller VM.

Virtual Machines –> Configure –> Availability Set –> Create an Availability Set

Set the name for availability set as ‘DC Avail Set’ and Save. Now let’s try logging in to VM.

In the Remote Desktop Connection Dialog Box click Connect and provide your user account as <<Machinename>>.cloudapp.netUserName and provide the password. Once we log in to the VM, we need to perform the Task of Initializing the Empty disks (mentioned in previous section)

Creation of Backup Domain Controller VM

Compute –> Virtual Machine –> From Gallery

Attach an empty disk of 20 GB to the back-up Domain Controller VM

Now we have successfully attached the Empty Disk to the backup domain controller VM. The next step is to select the ‘Availability Set’. Select the existing Availability Set of ‘DCAvailSet’ for back-up domain controller and save.

Now we have successfully created Availability Set for Domain Controller VMs (Primary and back-up). Now we need to log in to the SP2013-DC2 VM and perform the Empty Disk Initialization steps mentioned in section 1f.

Empty Disk Initialization

The empty disk initialization task need to be performed for all the types of the VMs that we would be creating as a part of SharePoint 2013 farm set up. Perform the following task on a VM running Windows Server 2012.

Server Manager à Click File and Storage Services à Disks

Select the Disk that is with the capacity of 20 GB and partition set to Unknown.

Create a new Volume, accept defaults and Set the Drive volume as ‘F’

The next step is to configure the Domain Controllers (both Primary and Back-up), it will be covered in detail in the part 2 of this article.

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