Publish - new hosted service - Azure portal

Environment settings – you can leave this as is. In this example I selected ["Production"].

Publish - Environment - VS2010

Build Configuration settings – you can leave this as is. In this example I selected ["Release"].

Publish - Build Configuration - VS2010

Service Configuration settings – you can leave this as is. In this example I selected ["Cloud"].

Publish - Service Configuration - VS2010

Enable the Remote Desktop connection setting. This will allow you to remote into the created VM. This brings up a different dialog box where you can specify user name, password and expiration date.

Publish - enable Remote Desktop Connection - VS2010

Click on the Settings… link. This brings you to the Remote Desktop Configuration window where you can provide user credentials to connect to the VM.

Publish - Remote Desktop Connection - VS2010

Click on the More Options – this will allow you to export (save) the certificate.

Remote Desktop Configuration - export Certificate

In the Details tab you can Copy to File (export) the certificate.

Remote Desktop Configuration - export Certificate - step 1

A export certificate wizard starts.

Remote Desktop Configuration - export Certificate - step 2

Select not to export the private key.

Remote Desktop Configuration - export Certificate - step 3

Remote Desktop Configuration - export Certificate - step 4

Save the certificate in a known place on your hard disk. Keep it safe.

Remote Desktop Configuration - export Certificate - step 5

Remote Desktop Configuration - export Certificate - step 6

You must now upload this certificate to the Azure Management Portal. Go to the Management Certificates section.

Management Certificates - upload - step 1

Select the certificate you just saved.

Management Certificates - upload - step 2

You can now go ahead and publish a new Azure VM Role. A Windows Azure Activity Log within Visual Studio shows you the progress.

Publish - Windows Azure Activity Log - VS2010

You can also check the progress in the Azure Management Portal.

Publish - Windows Azure Activity Log - Azure Management Portal

Once the environment is in a ready state you need to do some additional steps with regards to the Azure Connect bits.

First thing is make sure you have the Endpoint software installed in your local environment. In my case I have installed the Azure Connect Endpoint Software on my Team Foundation Server 11 Server, Domain Controller (which has also the DNS Service running) and my Visual Studio 11 development workstation.

You can do this by browsing (in each of your local servers/workstations) to the Virtual Network – Install Local endpoint option (top left of your Azure Management Portal).

Install Endpoint - Azure Management Portal

Install Endpoint - clipboard - Azure Management Portal

Once you have installed the Connect Endpoint Software on each of your local servers/workstations you will see them appear in the Connect Subscription section alongside your newly created VM Worker Role.

You now need to group all of them together – you do this by either creating a new Endpoint Group or edit an existing one (like in my example).

Edit Endpoint Group - Azure Management Portal

Connect - Grouping Endpoints - Azure Management Portal

In my case I already have another VM Worker Role added to the same group (another environment I did previously).

Once this step is done, hopefully you will be see the Local Endpoints enabled in all environments – the local servers and the VM Worker Role.

Azure Endpoint Connect Status in OS

Check the diagnostics window to see if everything is OK.

Endpoint Connect Diagnostics Window

At this point your Azure VM Role should be automatically added to your local domain. If it is not, then you can easily add it manually.

Domain added VM Role

If your VM was not added to the domain automatically, you can still add it manually.

Manually adding Role to Domain

Configuring Lab Management 11 Environment

You are now ready to start creating a new Lab Management environment. Open MTM 11 and go to the Lab Management section and select New to create a new environment.

Lab Management - Add Standard Environment - step 0

Step 1 - Select Standard Environment and provide name & description.

Lab Management - Add Standard Environment - step 1

Step 2 - Provide the Azure Role VM name and Lab Role. In my example this is ["RD00155D423994"] and this is a ["Web Server"].

You must also make sure you provide the correct credentials enabling Lab Management to log on to the target VM Role. This must be a user that is member of the Administrators group.

Lab Management - Add Standard Environment - step 2

At this point you are in a position to Verify the Lab Environment configuration – press the Verify button.

Lab Management - Add Standard Environment - step 4

The second step in this list is the most difficult one to get right. Make sure you have enabled the firewall exceptions correctly as outlined above and that you have provided the correct credentials to access the machine. In order for this step to succeed you must have enabled File & Print Sharing on your VM Role.

Finish the wizard. At this point Lab Manager is preparing the Azure VM Role – it is uploading the Test Agent 11 and Lab Agent 11 and trying to configuring them.

Lab Management - Add Standard Environment - step 5

Now at this point things will go wrong. First of all this step takes a very long time and eventually it will come back with an error.

Lab Management - Add Standard Environment - step 6

Lab Management - Add Standard Environment - step 7

This error is caused because the Test Agent cannot connect back to the Test Controller. This is due to some change in the implementation – a new checkpoint – in VS11 and its incompatibility with Azure VM Roles (at the moment).

The way around this is to add the following key in the AppSettings section of the  QTAgentService.exe.config on the Azure VM Role.

<add key=”IgnoreNetworkAdapterInfo” value “true” />

You can find the QTAgentService.exe.config on the D-Drive (Windows) most probably in D:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0\Common7\IDE

[Many thanks to Vijay Machiraju and Darshan Desai from Microsoft for helping to debug this problem]

Once you have added this you must restart the Test Agent service.You can now go back to MTM 11 and check the status of the environment – it should be in a Ready state. If not then you can remove the environment and start the procedure of creating a new environment again. This time the installation will go much quicker and the environment should now end up in a ready state.

Lab Management - Add Standard Environment - step 8

If you still notice an error on the right side – you can safely ignore this error – it is a remnant from the first configuration attempt. You can get rid of this by opening the environment and updating something (for instance the name). This will refresh everything and remove the error message.

What’s next?

In the next post I will outline how to effectively use this environment in an End to End Build, Deploy and Test scenario using MTM 11, Web Deploy and TFS 11 Build Services (possibly also defined in Azure VM Role).