Tag: Azure Pack

Moving your WordPress site running in Microsoft Azure to Azure Pack

Drum Roll please ….

I’ve now moved my blog from Microsoft  Azure to our own Private Cloud running on Windows Azure Pack!  Hurray!

azpack1

It was a really smooth transition, involving a couple of very easy steps to maintain all blogposts, media and comments.

  1. Provision a new WordPress Blog in Azure Pack.
  2. Login to WordPress to finish the installation.
  3. Upgrade WordPress (to the same version as your old wordpress site).
  4. Add the same Themes as on your old site.
  5. Install WP Clone plugin (free) on both the old and the new wordpress site.
  6. On the old blog, use the WP Clone plugin to make a Backup. When it’s done, you will get a URL, save that.
  7. On the new blog, use the WP Clone plugin to import the Backup from the URL you got in the previous step.
  8. In the new site, update your sites URL’s. In my case, I chanced isolation.labcenteronline.com to www.isolation.se.
  9. Update your DNS points, to point to your private cloud url (in my case, isolation.labcenteronline.com).
  10. Done!

 

Script for importing existing VMs into Azure Pack

As you start working with Azure Pack, you probably realize that you have a lot of existing VM’s that you would like to import into Azure Pack, and by that be able to use them just as you can handle all new ones?

All that’s needed for that, is to set the correct AzurePack user as the owner and SelfServicUuser on that Virtual Machine. And of course, have the machine in the correct “Cloud”.

Here is a small script which will help you out by;

  1. Asking in a Grid View, which Cloud you would like to import a machine in.
  2. Ask which user that should be the new owner of this VM.
  3. Let you pick, which VM from the Cloud you would like to import.

As we have multiple clouds, and users can have multiple subscriptions, I chose to make the script use GridView, to minimize the risk for human errors (typos).

 

Azure Pack: change Web Sites Default Domain DNS Suffix

To change the Default URL (DNS Suffix) for your Web Sites in Windows Azure Pack, follow these simple steps;

On the computer that is hosting the Web Sites Controller, run the following Windows PowerShell command:

Update (2014-07-14): It looks like the command above does not support -DnsSuffix anymore, but one of my readers has posted an alternative solution in the comments;

As an alternative you can use the following approach:

Check the change by using

And you’ll after that also have to do this:
On your SQL Server, open Management Studio.
In the Hosting Database admin.WebSystems table, change the
PublishingDns, FtpDns, and Subdomain to your desired URLs.

Restart your AzurePack servers to make the changes apply everywhere.

Azure Pack: Web Sites MBCA 2.0 Model preventing Feature Pack for Windows Azure Pack Web Sites v2 (KB2927682) from installing.

Windows Update is failing to install “Feature Pack for Windows Azure Pack Web Sites v2 (KB2927682)” on one of my Azure Pack servers. And just give the error message: 0x80070643

The event log shows a slightly better error message; “Product: Web Sites Local Feed — A newer version of Web Sites Local Feed was found on this machine.”

After further investigation, the MSI Logfile reveals some great information and clues;

It lists a program with GUID {BE2AD1F0-C5FF-4F62-95BD-44C829150573} that prevents the installation from completing.
And that GUID turned out, after a quick Registry search, to be “Web Sites MBCA 2.0 Model”.

And after uninstalling “Web Sites MBCA 2.0 Model” from Add/Remove Programs, my Windows Update installation went through at once!

Success!

Azure Pack : Tenant Site automatic installation

If you want to install Azure Pack : Tenant Site in a distributed installation meaning not an Express installation on just one server. It’s possible to do it manually, OR … of course in a scripted way, so it’s automatic, scripted and unattended. Same result each time and smallest amount of time wasted on installations.  Here is a small powershell script that will take care of all the dependencies and install all the packages for the Public Tenant Site.