Resources for ramping up on Azure Resource Manager

In the July 2015 SAB webinar, I presented Azure Resource Manager as the new deployment model for compute, storage, and networking resources in Azure infrastructure services. Resource Manager is designed to eventually replace the classic deployment model, which has been the model up to now for deploying virtual machine-based workloads in Azure.

As I described in the webinar, here is the classic deployment model:

  

The three main buckets for deploying a virtual machine-based workload in the classic deployment model are storage accounts, cloud services, and virtual networks.

Here is the new Resource Manager deployment model:

  

The individual components of Azure infrastructure services have been componentized and organized, and are offered by a series of resource providers: a storage resource provider (SRP), a compute resource provider (CRP), and a network resource provider (NRP). This componentization gives you more flexibility to construct more complex configurations and to automate configuration.

If you are creating new production workloads in Azure, Microsoft recommends that you use the Resource Manager deployment model, rather than the classic deployment model. This will prevent you from having to eventually migrate that workload from the classic to the Resource Manager deployment model in the future.

A big part of the automation in Azure Resource Manager is templates, which are JSON scripts for creating everything from a single availability set to a nine-server, high-availability SharePoint farm. You typically execute templates from the Azure Preview portal, from Azure PowerShell, or from the Azure Command Line Interface (CLI).

To understand the basic features of Resource Manager, see these articles:

To understand how to create workloads with templates, see these articles:

For a series of steps to create a Resource Manager-based virtual machine with Azure PowerShell, see Create and preconfigure a Windows Virtual Machine with Resource Manager and Azure PowerShell.

If you have any questions, please create a discussion in the SAB Yammer network.

Thanks, and enjoy.

Joe Davies