How to activate Microsoft Azure internal-use rights licenses? And Experience Azure.

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One of the key challenge for partners is to ensure that cloud works on their term. They get the better performance, and productivity in cloud, their LOB applications are compatible in cloud. Activating Internal Use Rights (IUR) would give you that option to test Azure and run dev/ test scenarios, virtual machines and try other Azure features to get familiarize with it. Internal-use software licenses for the latest Microsoft software allow you to get firsthand knowledge of features and capabilities. The Microsoft Partner Network continually updates the internal-use software benefits with new products and more recent versions of software already available to partners. You can use these new benefits as soon as they are added to the Microsoft Partner Network licensing list. Software benefits, delivered through digital download, can be used to run your business and to help you gain valuable hands-on experience with the latest technologies.

You could watch this 2 minutes video to activate your IUR : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tc2VKEX2veQ&feature=youtu.be

In order to activate your IUR:

  1. Go to the Microsoft Partner Digital Download Portal
  2. Sign in with the Microsoft account (formerly Windows Live ID) that is associated to your Microsoft Partner Network membership and is currently assigned administrator rights.
  3. Select the Microsoft Online Services section.
  4. From the product list, select Microsoft Azure.
  5. On the Obtain cloud benefit page, click the Special instructions link.
  6. Under the Your Microsoft Azure benefit entitlement area, click Activate this benefit.
  7. Complete the Sign up page by filling in the required fields. Payment information is required, but you will not be charged anything without your consent. If you reach the limit of your monthly internal-use rights benefit, you will be notified before any charges are applied.

You could also find step by step instructions to activate your IUR benefits available at https://support.microsoft.com/kb/3013414

Now what? I could share couple of scenarios which you could use Azure for-

Dev/Test:

You can rapidly self-provision as many virtual machines as you need for your application development and testing in the cloud without waiting for hardware, procurement or internal processes. You can connect globally to their on-premises network with Azure Virtual Network and confidently scale up, scale out, and generate load to deliver applications faster, and this offering helps partner learn that concept. You could find more details at our online offering “Labs on Azure: First Steps” by registering at https://support.microsoft.com/kb/3009981?wa=wsignin1.0. This offering would help partners spin up a test lab or sandbox quickly, and become agile in learning, development, and prototyping. This offering help them connect a lab to their existing infrastructure when required. When they finish, help them tear it down and bring it back in-house to run in their on-premises datacenter, or keep it in the cloud.

Websites: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/services/websites/

With Azure Websites, you can deploy and scale modern websites and web apps in seconds. Azure Websites is a fully managed Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) that enables you to build, deploy and scale enterprise-grade web Apps in seconds. Focus on your application code, and let Azure take care of the infrastructure to scale and securely run it for you. Azure Websites is the best place to run your Content Management System (CMS) with a set of enterprise-class features that allow you to develop, deploy and scale with confidence and ease. With Azure Websites, not only can you deploy a site in less than 70 seconds, you can then scale it to multiple instances, configure high availability, deploy across multiple regions with Microsoft Azure Traffic Manager and even automate backup and restore and schedule regular maintenance jobs to optimize your performance.

  • Other high-end features that makes Azure a leading platform for your CMS are multiple deployment slots, which allow you to validate site changes before publishing and integration with Azure’s Content Delivery Network (CDN). In addition, Azure’s fine-grained monitoring tools lets you keep a close eye on your site’s performance and react to any issues in real time.
  • Use ASP.NET, Java, PHP, Node.js or Python. Run popular web apps and CMS solutions including WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, Umbraco and DotNetNuke .
  • Azure makes it easy to create and use data solutions with your Web apps. Support for Microsoft SQL, MySQL, DocumentDB, Search, MongoDB, Redis, Azure Table Storage . Test your apps for free with a SQL Database and MySQL Database.
  • Run your Web apps in a high-availability environment with automatic patching. Web apps deployed with Azure Websites are isolated and are hosted in VMs dedicated to your applications – ensuring predictable performance and security isolation.
  • Azure enables you to build websites that can consume data from your own data center. With Hybrid Connections and VNET it's easy to access your data securely from your on-premises data centers - or anywhere else in the world. Azure Active Directory enables you to limit access to only your employees or partners. Interested in moving an on-premises website onto the cloud? Use the Migration Assistant to analyze and migrate your site with just a few clicks.
  • Follow tutorials to create websites from scratch, or from the marketplace, and deploy them from Visual Studio or source control repositories, such as TFS and GitHub. Learn how to monitor, scale, back up, troubleshoot, maximize performance, authenticate users, and more. 

Back Up: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/backup/

Data is the heart of any organization and backing up this data is a key part of a business strategy. Cloud based backup solutions provide a reliable, inexpensive and scalable solution with zero capital investment and minimal operational expense. Azure Backup is a simple and reliable data protection solution which enables customers to back up their on-premises data to Microsoft Azure. Your backup data is secure over the wire and at rest. The backup data is stored in geo-replicated storage which maintains 6 copies of your data across two Azure datacenters. With 99.9% service availability, Azure Backup provides an operational peace of mind.

  • Azure Backup is easy to use and seamlessly protects data from Windows Server, Windows Server Essentials and System Center Data Protection Manager (DPM). DPM protects a wide range of Microsoft workloads and it is easy to extend their protection to Azure. Backups can be managed using PowerShell or through an inbox user interface.
  • Your backup data is secure over the wire and at rest. The backup data is stored in geo-replicated storage which maintains 6 copies of your data across two Azure datacenters. With 99.9% service availability, Azure Backup provides an operational peace of mind.
  • Azure Backup is efficient over the network and on your disk. Once the initial seeding is complete, only incremental changes are sent at a defined frequency. Inbuilt features such as compression, encryption, longer retention and bandwidth throttling helps boost IT efficiency.

Please join Labs on Azure: First Steps or other offerings to get most of Azure https://support.microsoft.com/kb/2973481/ scenarios.