Are you new to Azure? You don’t know how where to start? Get started with the Azure Quickstart Center, full of guides, best practices and learning guides without leaving the Azure Portal!

How to open the Azure Quickstart Center? You can use the global search box at the top of the Azure Portal, or using the All services menu.

The user friendly environment of the Quickstart Center opens and you can start your jurney to the Azure! The Quickstart Center has two basic sections. The “Get started” and the “Take an online course”.

The “Get started” section has two sub-sections. The “Start a project”, sub-section, where you will be able to discover many options, architecture, cost and prerequisites for creating resources, and the “Setup guides” where you will have access to steped guides on how build you environment based to best practices and the Cloud Adoption Framework.

examples:

The Get Strated / Create a virtual machine option will ask you to choose between Windows or Linux VM

If you press Create, information about options, benefits, architecture references, prising and free account options.

The Start a project / Azure setup guide will provide you with all the required information to build your Azure environment using Microsoft’s best practices and the Cloud Adoption Framework.

At the Take an online course section, you will find the learning path that Microsoft has prepared about Microsoft Azure. At the Microsoft Learn site you can learn new skills and discover the power of Microsoft products with step-by-step guidance.

You can learn more about Azure setup and migration in the Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework for Azure.

More basic level guides: https://www.e-apostolidis.gr/tag/azure-start-point/

Pantelis Apostolidis

Pantelis Apostolidis is a Sr. Specialist, Azure at Microsoft and a former Microsoft Azure MVP. For the last 20 years, Pantelis has been involved to major cloud projects in Greece and abroad, helping companies to adopt and deploy cloud technologies, driving business value. He is entitled to a lot of Microsoft Expert Certifications, demonstrating his proven experience in delivering high quality solutions. He is an author, blogger and he is acting as a spokesperson for conferences, workshops and webinars. He is also an active member of several communities as a moderator in azureheads.gr and autoexec.gr. Follow him on Twitter @papostolidis.

www.cloudcorner.gr

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In this post series we will go through some basic steps on how to start with Microsoft Azure. At this post we will see how we can create Point-to-Site VPN connection with Azure.

If you don’t have an Azure Subscription, you can easily create a free trial by just going to https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/free/

Create typical a VIrtual Network

In order to create Point-to-Site VPN connection it needs a Virtual Network Gateway. Go to the Virtual Network, Subnets and add a Gateway Subnet.

FInally we can add the Virtual Network Gateway. From the portal, create a Virtual Network Gateway resource and add it to the previously created Virtual Network.

The Virtual Network Gateway can take up to 45 minutes to be created.

Once the Virtual Network Gateway is created we need one more step. To configure Point-to-site. Open the Virtual Network Gateway and press configure.

We will need a root and a client self-signed certificate to complete the setup. Using a WIndows 10 or Windows Server 2016 machine we can make use of the New-SelfSignedCertificate cmdlet that makes the process easy. The whole process is described here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/vpn-gateway/vpn-gateway-certificates-point-to-site

For the root certificate run the below PowerShell using ISE:

$cert = New-SelfSignedCertificate -Type Custom -KeySpec Signature `
-Subject "CN=prodevrootcert" -KeyExportPolicy Exportable `
-HashAlgorithm sha256 -KeyLength 2048 `
-CertStoreLocation "Cert:\CurrentUser\My" -KeyUsageProperty Sign -KeyUsage CertSign

For the client certificate run the below PowerShell using ISE:

New-SelfSignedCertificate -Type Custom -DnsName ProDevChildCert -KeySpec Signature `
-Subject "CN=ProDevChildCert" -KeyExportPolicy Exportable `
-HashAlgorithm sha256 -KeyLength 2048 `
-CertStoreLocation "Cert:\CurrentUser\My" `
-Signer $cert -TextExtension @("2.5.29.37={text}1.3.6.1.5.5.7.3.2")

Export the root certificate in cer format using MMC, open the Certificates snap-in and select “current user”. Find the root certificate under Personal –> Certificates and right click –> All Tasks export

Select to “not export the private key” and use Base64 encoded.

Now you have the prodevrootcert.cer

After that, export the client certificate by selecting “export the private key” , select the “include all certificates in the certification path” and the “enable certificate privacy”. Add a password and export it to pfx file.

Now you have the prodevchildcert.pfx. This pfx file must be installed to all the client computers that will use this Point-to-Site connection.

Now lets go back to the Point-to-Site configuration page. Add an address pool that the VPN clients will use. This subnet must be different from the Virtual Network address space.

Then open the root certificate, the cer file, using notepad, copy the text between the Begin and End marks.

Paste the certificate text to the “Root certificated” –> Public certificate data” field and add a name to the “Name” field.

Press Save and the “Download VPN Client” button will be enabled and we can download the VPN client.

In order to establish the VPN connection we need to install the VPN Client and the Client “pfx” certificate to the workstation.

Pantelis Apostolidis

Pantelis Apostolidis is a Sr. Specialist, Azure at Microsoft and a former Microsoft Azure MVP. For the last 20 years, Pantelis has been involved to major cloud projects in Greece and abroad, helping companies to adopt and deploy cloud technologies, driving business value. He is entitled to a lot of Microsoft Expert Certifications, demonstrating his proven experience in delivering high quality solutions. He is an author, blogger and he is acting as a spokesperson for conferences, workshops and webinars. He is also an active member of several communities as a moderator in azureheads.gr and autoexec.gr. Follow him on Twitter @papostolidis.

www.cloudcorner.gr

The post Azure Start Point | Point-to-Site VPN appeared first on Apostolidis Cloud Corner.

In this post series we will go through some basic steps on how to start with Microsoft Azure. For start we will create a Web App.

If you don’t have an Azure Subscription, you can easily create a free trial by just going to https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/free/

Let’s create our first Web App. Go to the Azure Portal by navigating to https://portal.azure.com and click “+ Create a resource”

At the search box write “Web App” and press enter

At the search results. click the “Web App” and at the next screen just press “Create”

The “Web App Create” wizard will open.

Enter a name for the App. This will be the Public name of your App. Azure by default provides the domain *.azurewebsites.net for free. So in my example the prowebdev.azurewebsites.net will be the URL of my App Select the Azure Subscription that will used to bill the Web App and a Resource Group. The Resource Group is used to organize the resources and provide role based access control among other. OS: Select the Operating System platform that will host your Web App. This can be Windows, Linux or a Docker Container. For the test I will select Windows.

As you can see the wizard has selected an App Service Plan by default with a random name and location. The App Service Plan is actually the Web Server that will host out Web App. Click on the “App Service Plan/Location”

Add a name for the Web Server, select the Location that is nearest to you (or your clients) and the Pricing Tier.

By pressing OK you will return to the Web App create wizard and press Create. Now you can monitor the creating process of the App form the “Notifications” option at the top right of the portal, it is the button that has a ringing bell image. First you will see the “Deployment in progress…” message and as soon as the App is ready you will see the “Deployment completed” message.

Now if you go to the Resource group you will see two resources. The App Service and the App Service Plan. In high level, the App Service Plan is the web server and the App Service is the Web Application.

Now click the App Service and at its blade you can see your applications URL.

Click the URL and you will see the Demo page

Pantelis Apostolidis

Pantelis Apostolidis is a Sr. Specialist, Azure at Microsoft and a former Microsoft Azure MVP. For the last 20 years, Pantelis has been involved to major cloud projects in Greece and abroad, helping companies to adopt and deploy cloud technologies, driving business value. He is entitled to a lot of Microsoft Expert Certifications, demonstrating his proven experience in delivering high quality solutions. He is an author, blogger and he is acting as a spokesperson for conferences, workshops and webinars. He is also an active member of several communities as a moderator in azureheads.gr and autoexec.gr. Follow him on Twitter @papostolidis.

www.cloudcorner.gr

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