_setup

Setting up your environment for the labs

In this lab you will find the prerequisites and steps to help you set up your computer. After completing the lab you will have a working environment, ready for the other labs.

If not using your own Windows computer: Create an Azure Virtual Machine

Create a new Visual Studio 2015 Preview Virtual Machine

If you don't have a computer running windows with Visual Studio 2013 or 2015 installed, it is faster and easier to create a new VM on your Azure subscription, and use that VM to complete the labs.

At this stage you should have an Azure subscription - if not please talk to your instructor first before continuing.

Follow these instructions to create the Visual Studio 2015 Preview virtual machine:

1. Log in to the (Azure management portal with your credentials)
2. From the bottom of the portal, go to New > Compute > Virtual Machine > From Gallery

1. From the image menu on the left, select Visual Studio, and then select the Visual Studio Ultimate 2015 Preview image

1. On the 'Virtual machine configuration' page, select a Standard D2 machine size and choose a user name and password that you will remember then click next

1. On the next 'Virtual machine configuration' page, choose one of the Australia regions if they are available, otherwise either West US or Southeast Asia will work, then click next

1. On the next page click the checkbox button to start creating the virtual machine.
2. It can take 5 to 10 minutes for the VM to be created. Once it is ready it will show with a status of 'Running'.
3. Once the status of the VM is 'Running' for a couple of minutes, select it and click Connect at the bottom and you'll be able to remote desktop into your shiny new VM.

Configure your computer (perform these actions from inside the VM you created one above)

Download content of this GitHub repository (optional but recommended)

The labs provided have a combination of text documentation and sample code. In order to have the necessary sample files locally inside your VM, we strongly recommend you to download all content in this repository to your VM. This is a zip archive, so make sure to unblock the zip file before extracting it.

Install Microsoft Azure PowerShell Cmdlets

The Azure PowerShell modules and all dependencies are available through the Microsoft Web Platform Installer. To install it, follow these instructions:

1. Open Microsoft Web Platform Installer.
2. Find the row for Microsoft Azure PowerShell with Microsoft Azure SDK and click the Add button.
3. Click Install.

Install Microsoft Azure PowerShell

Note: The Microsoft Azure PowerShell Cmdlets are only required for the Create Virtual Machine using PowerShell task of the Infrastructure As A Service in Microsoft Azure lab.

###Install the Azure Cross-Platform Command-Line Interface

There are two ways to install the Azure Cross-Platform Command-Line Interface (or xplat-cli): using installer packages for Windows and OS X, or if Node.js is installed on your system, the npm command.

Once the xplat-cli has been installed, you will be able to use the azure command from your command-line interface (Bash, Terminal, Command prompt) to access the xplat-cli commands.

In order to install the Azure Cross-Platform Command-Line Interface using the installer, just download the package for your platform and follow the instructions. The following installer packages are available:

• Windows installer

• OS X installer

  Note: If Node.js is already installed on your system, use the following command to install the xplat-cli:

  npm install azure-cli -g
  

  Note: The Azure Cross-Platform Command-Line Interface is only required for the Create Virtual Machine using Cross-Platform Command Line Interface task of the Infrastructure As A Service in Microsoft Azure lab.

To verify that ensure that you have the Azure Cross-Platform Command-Line Interface correctly installed, open a Command Prompt and execute the following command:

````
azure
````

You should get a message similar to the following:

````
info:             _    _____   _ ___ ___
info:            /_\  |_  / | | | _ \ __|
info:      _ ___/ _ \__/ /| |_| |   / _|___ _ _
info:    (___  /_/ \_\/___|\___/|_|_\___| _____)
info:       (_______ _ _)         _ ______ _)_ _
info:              (______________ _ )   (___ _ _)
info:
info:    Microsoft Azure: Microsoft's Cloud Platform
info:
info:    Tool version 0.8.13
help:
help:    Display help for a given command
help:      help [options] [command]
help:
help:    Log in to an Azure subscription using Active Directory. Currently, the user can login only via Microsoft organizational account
help:      login [options]
help:
help:    Log out from Azure subscription using Active Directory. Currently, the user can log out only via Microsoft organizational account
help:      logout [options] [username]
help:
help:    Open the portal in a browser
help:      portal [options]
help:
help:    Commands:
help:      account        Commands to manage your account information and publish settings
help:      config         Commands to manage your local settings
help:      hdinsight      Commands to manage your HDInsight accounts
help:      mobile         Commands to manage your Mobile Services
help:      network        Commands to manage your Networks
help:      sb             Commands to manage your Service Bus configuration
help:      service        Commands to manage your Cloud Services
help:      site           Commands to manage your Web Sites
help:      sql            Commands to manage your SQL Server accounts
help:      storage        Commands to manage your Storage objects
help:      vm             Commands to manage your Virtual Machines
help:
help:    Options:
help:      -h, --help     output usage information
help:      -v, --version  output the application version
````

Summary

You have Visual Studio 2015 Previewand the _Azure SDK installed on a VM and you are now good to go with the rest of the labs.