Do you empower your customers whether they’re colleagues, internal departments or even 3rd party entities to provision virtual machines, databases or websites in your data center?
Windows Azure Pack (WAP)
This is a free self-service portal add-on for Virtual Machine Manager 2012 R2. It has been production level for quite a few years, supported and maintained by Microsoft and heavily leverages the proven Microsoft System Center product suite. WAP even has its’ own update rollup classification for patching.
Why use Windows Azure Pack
It’s available for production use and in most cases a free stepping stone for your company to take into the world of cloud. It allows you to evaluate policies and procedures in-house without having to migrate or deploy anything into the public cloud.
Investment Costs
I’m betting if you’re looking at this, you’ve probably already have the potential to download and start using WAP in the next few days, hours if you’re a rock star!
- Windows Server
- System Center
- Free download of WAP
- The want to empower tenants/customers to provision and manage their own virtual machines
- You want to put it in production NOW!
Main Components of Windows Azure Pack
Windows Azure Pack Components
- Admin Portal – Web portal where you configure, monitor and manage WAP. Tenant Plans, limits, URLS are also managed here.
- Tenant Portal – Dedicated web portal where tenants/customers/department members log in and provision, manage, deploy their virtual network and virtual machines.
- SQL Server – Backend store for WAP
- Service Management API (SMA) – Installed via Orchestrator install and provides a REST API to orchestrate the work flow between the different portals.
- Virtual Machine Clouds – This is where the tenant clouds reside in Virtual Machine Manager (VMM)
- WAP Web Sites – A feature for WAP to provide shared scalable web sites running ASP.NET, PHP and Node.js applications
- Automation – Can use SMA via the portal and include your own PowerShell scripts or PowerShell scripts shared by the community
Where to find more information
Windows Azure Pack Homepage – https://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/cloud-platform/windows-azure-pack
WAP Wiki – http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/20689.the-azure-pack-wiki-wapack.aspx
Microsoft Azure Stack
Microsoft Azure Stack also known as AS is the next generation of Windows Azure Pack. Pack is more like and add-on, where Stack will require a whole lot more physical infrastructure as it leverages new hardware, firmware and technologies offered by Windows Server 2016. Don’t write off WAP yet as AS is still not production ready. Use this time to deploy Windows Azure Pack, define new processes and procedures that allow your customers to deploy and manage their own VMs, and refine what you’ve learned. Once you’ve deployed WAP you’ll have a much greater understanding on how self service portals will benefit your organization and have a much deeper understanding of what will be required when you deploy Microsoft Azure Stack.
Microsoft Azure Stack Homepage – https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/overview/azure-stack/
