System Center 2012 Configuration Manager and System Center 2012 Endpoint Protection support for Windows Azure Virtu...

[Yvette O'Meally]

First published on CloudBlogs on Oct, 23 2013
Windows Azure provides on-demand infrastructure that scales and adapts to your changing business needs. Whether you are creating brand new applications or running existing applications, Windows Azure Virtual Machines allows you to extend your on-premises environments to the cloud. You can deploy your own customized Windows Server or Linux images into Windows Azure Virtual Machines or get started with a pre-configured image, in minutes… Through the use of Windows Azure’s Virtual Network service along with Virtual Machines, the cloud becomes a seamless extension of your enterprise datacenter with commercially backed SLAs... Naturally, with this new extension arises a new question; “Can I manage these servers in the cloud in the same way as I manage servers on-premises? I need to use the products, technologies and skills I already have.” You expect that the experience should be exactly the same whether the server is physically in your datacenter or running in Windows Azure Virtual Machines. Today, we’re happy to announce that we are enabling support for managing Windows Azure Virtual Machines using System Center 2012 Configuration Manager SP1 or later and, System Center 2012 Endpoint Protection SP1 or later. That means, using the same products and skills you use for your on-premises datacenters, you can continue to manage your servers in the cloud. No need to re-tool or re-skill. Let’s take a closer look into the two supported scenarios, which have been the most demanded use cases by our customers and partners since we have announce general availability of Windows Azure Virtual Machines and Virtual Network.

• Existing on-premises Configuration Manager infrastructure manages Windows Server or Linux running in Windows Azure Virtual Machines through a secure Site-to-Site connection .

Simply put, your management smarts stay on-premises and your server agents in the cloud communicate back to them using a secured, IPsec based Windows Azure Virtual Network connection. Imagine an e-commerce application - make it one that sees seasonally variable customer traffic - which is also running in Windows Azure Virtual Machines.  You grow and shrink the compute resources, virtualized servers, available to this app to manage the peaks and the valleys.  In this scenario, through a single pane of glass running on-premises, you can path your virtual servers in the cloud and complete your configuration management. You might even forget that this app is running in virtualized servers in the cloud as they are managed from the same single pane of System Center glass that manages your desktop clients and on-premises servers. In the table below, you can find the specific Configuration Manager features supported for this scenario.

• A single all-in-one Primary site running in Windows Azure Virtual Machines manages Windows Servers or Linux running in Windows Azure Virtual Machines on the same virtual network. This all-in-one standalone Primary site is a single Windows Azure Virtual Machine that runs all required site system roles as well as Microsoft SQL Server locally without the use of any remote site systems or roles (please see, SQL Server in Windows Azure Virtual Machines for more information on setting up Microsoft SQL Server).  With this all-in-the-cloud scenario, both your management smarts and server agents live in Windows Azure with no on-premises footprint.

Imagine a start-up, born in the cloud running all of its mission critical apps in Windows Azure Virtual Machines. It makes sense for this organization to take advantage of Configuration Manager running in a virtual machine in the cloud. In the table below, you can find the specific Configuration Manager features supported for this scenario. It is only fair that you ask how licensing and support will work for these scenarios. Through a flexible license mobility model, we enable you to assign on-premises licenses of Configuration Manager to manage instances running in Windows Azure. On-premises licenses with active Software Assurance qualify for mobility. You can find the full detail in the System Center licensing guidance . And, when you have questions, you call us directly within your Windows Azure support plan . No handoffs and no transfers. For Windows Azure Virtual Machines plus, System Center Configuration Manager we got your support needs covered. What have we covered so far? Making the cloud a seamless extension of your enterprise datacenter, reusing your existing management tools and skills, reassigning your licenses with SA to do so and, replying on a single vendor for support. What is next? Giving it a spin… You can test for yourself how System Center Configuration Manager works to manage your servers running in Windows Azure Virtual Machines. If you have not signed up for a free Windows Azure trial yet, you can do so here . -- Michael Cureton P.S. The following Linux distributions are endorsed for Windows Azure Virtual Machines: Canonical UBUNTU 12.04, CENTOS by Open Logic 6.3, SUSE 11SP2 and requires version 1.0.0.4648 or later of the Linux client for Configuration Manager. Y ou can find endorsed Linux distributions for Windows Azure Virtual Machines at this link. For the entire list of Microsoft server workloads supported on Windows Azure Virtual Machines, please use this link. *Software inventory for Linux clients is achieved through hardware inventory, which collects natively installed software - similar to add/remove programs for Windows systems. This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties and confers no rights.