Announcing U.S. TechNet on Tour Events for Fall, 2015

You are invited to join us for free, interactive events led by Microsoft Technology Evangelists.

Cloud is making DR a feasible solution, technically and financially, for companies of all sizes by utilizing a cloud solution provider, i.e. someone else’s infrastructure. In these deliveries, attendees will learn the fundamentals of cloud and see how to employ Microsoft Azure as part of a wider disaster recovery (DR) plan! This is an opportunity to learn, experience and gain technical depth of DR, and network with IT pros in your areas and grow together.

Attendees will receive a free Microsoft Azure pass and spend most of the day in a hands-on lab environment. Customers should attend the event to learn:

• Introduction to Microsoft Azure
• Cloud Storage and Virtual Networks
• Virtual Machines
• Azure Site Recovery (ASR)

Who should attend: The event is technical by nature and is aimed at IT pros who get hands-on with technology as part of their day to day jobs.  Previous experience of Microsoft Azure is beneficial but not essential. Here are the city registration links, dates and presenter. And we are looking forward to meeting you all.

 

City	State	Event Date	Presenters
Seattle	WA	9/1/2015	Jennelle Crothers and Brian Lewis
San Francisco	CA	9/3/2015	Jennelle Crothers and Yung Chou
Houston	TX	9/22/2015	Kevin Remde and Yung Chou
Charlotte	NC	9/29/2015	Tommy Patterson and Yung Chou
Philadelphia	PA	9/30/2015	Dan Stolts and Blain Barton
Indianapolis	IN	10/6/2015	Brian Lewis and Yung Chou
Tampa	FL	10/7/2015	Blain Barton and Tommy Patterson
New York	NY	10/8/2015	Dan Stolts and Kevin Remde
Irvine	CA	10/14/2015	Jennelle Crothers and Yung Chou
Dallas	TX	10/16/2015	Kevin Remde and Yung Chou

Get a head start with Azure today:

• Sign up Azure free trial with $200 usage credit
• Register for Microsoft Virtual Academy and start your learning

Try It Yourself – Configure a Point-to-Site VPN Connection to a Virtual Network (3-Part video Series)

This connection is very easy to understand and implement. Point-to-Site (or P2S) here refers as a connection between a single device (namely a connection point) and an Azure virtual network (vnet) site.

A P2S connection requires a subnet defined within the target Azure vnet site. If to examine from a connected Azure vnet site, a connecting device automatically allocates an IP within the defined P2S subnet and connects to the site via a VPN connection.

Technically, a P2S connection is specific to, not the physical but logical device which is the OS instance which a connecting physical device is running on, since the connection is based on a-private-and-a-public key pair generated with the OS. At this time, Azure P2S supports only self-signed certificates, and the x.509 certificate (i.e. a public key) of an employed key pair resides in a target Azure vent site, while the certificate of PFX format (i.e. a certificate exported with a private key) should be installed at a connecting device. An administrator can configure an Azure P2S connection by:

1. First enabling P2S connectivity and defining a P2S subnet associated with a target Azure vnet site
2. Generating an x.509/PFX certificate pair
3. Uploading the x.509 certificate to the site
4. Distributing to and installing the PFX certificate on intended (logical) devices
5. Initiating a connection from a logical device

Although one x.509-and-PFX-certificate-pair is sufficient to establish a P2S connection between an Azure vnet site with multiple devices by uploading an x.509 certificate to a target Azure vent site and employing/installing the associated PFX file on all connecting devices. The best practices is to employ a unique certificate pair for each connecting device to better secure the P2S environment.

Here are the Azure documentation page and complementary videos to walk through the processes and operations to

1. Create a virtual network and a VPN gateway (video)
2. Create your certificates (video)
3. Configure your VPN client (video)