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Getting Azure Pack Up and Running In Your Lab…

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I finally got around to doing this in my lab last week.  Overall, pretty straightforward install, especially if you follow the blog post authored by Anders HERE.

Another good link from TechNet here – including links to the Web Platform Installer to get WAP started.  https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn296439.aspx

Azure Pack setup success!!

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A few things worth noting from my experience (and I’ll update this blog as I add more too my lab setup)

  • You can get WAP and SPF on the same server.  No issues there.
  • The SPF install comes off the Orchestrator Install media.  Mount the Orchestrator R2 ISO image and navigate to the SPF folder and click the setup.exe

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  • In my case, I ran VMM on a separate server (you’ll need to VMM console installed on the SPF/WAP server) and that VMM server manages a Hyper-V host that I’m using to deploy VM’s.
  • IMPORTANT:   Make sure you get everything updated to System Center 2012 R2 UR2.  INCLUDING SPF!!  There’s a separate update specifically for SPF.  I had an issue that was a pain to troubleshoot (thanks to the product team dev folks for the quick assist) because I had not installed the SPF UR2 update to the WAP/SPF server.  I had installed the UR2 for Orchestrator web service but that was not needed/required.  Also make sure that you don’t forget to apply the SQL script for UR2 to the VMM database.  You won’t be able to provision VM’s if you don’t do that.

Otherwise, the install is pretty straightforward.  Just make sure you read through the setup guide first to prepare for any steps that you need to do in advance or can do in parallel to save you some time.

One thing that’s worth doing is getting your VM setup with Server 2012 R2, latest updates, get Azure Pack installed but not configured as well as SPF with the appropriate updates and then create a checkpoint on the VM.  It was nice to have that checkpoint available to go back to when I messed up my configuration the first time and didn’t have to spend a half hour again on those installation steps.

Next step is getting RD Gateway going (required for RDP connections), some add-ons, connecting with Service Manager and whatever else I can find. 

Here’s the main System Center 2012 R2 UR2 link.  You can download all the packages there for install.  If your servers are set for automatic updates, they’ll get pulled down there too so check first to see if they are already installed.

https://support.microsoft.com/kb/2932881

Have fun!!