How to create a BizTalk 2010 R2 CTP Virtual Machine in Windows Azure

At TechEd 2012 members of the BizTalk product team promised a CTP release for BizTalk 2010 R2 in July.  This was true, but the CTP was made available only for a company that qualified for the TAP program. This changed a couple of weeks ago when the Windows Azure Team announced the availability of BizTalk Server 2010 R2 CTP Release in Windows Azure Virtual Machines gallery.

Now you can setup a complete BizTalk 2010 R2 CTP environment easily and quickly, without having the hassle of procuring hardware for your physical servers or virtual machines in your organization.

To create your BizTalk 2010 R2 CTP virtual machine you need access to a Windows Azure subscription. If you don’t have one already, you can sign up for Windows Azure 90-day free trial here.

Once you have your Azure subscription just follow these simple steps to get your environment up and running:

1) Sign in to the Windows Azure Management Portal.

2) On the command bar, click New.

3) Click Virtual Machine, and then click From Gallery.

4) In VM Box Selection click Platform Images, select the Microsoft BizTalk Server 2010 R2 CTP image, and then click the arrow to continue.

5) In VM Configuration enter the Virtual Machine name and the Administrator’s password. Select the size needed for your application. Click the right arrow.

6) You can connect virtual machines together under a cloud service but for testing purposes select Standalone Virtual Machine. Enter the DNS name for the VM, select the storage account for the VHD file and select the proper Affinity Group according to your geographic location.

7) In VM Options select None. Tis page apply only if you are connecting this virtual machine to other virtual machines or if you are adding the virtual machine to a virtual network. Click the check mark to create the virtual machine.

The VM creation process takes some minutes. Meanwhile you can watch its progress in the All Items page.

Once the VM has been created and provisioned its status will change to Running.

Click in the VM name and you will be redirected to its Dashboard, from here you can perform common administrative tasks as Restart, Shutdown or even delete the VM if necessary.

In order to access your BizTalk 2010 R2 CTP VM you need to click in the Connect icon. This will download a remote desktop shortcut to your PC. Just double click it and you will be connected to the VM.

As you can see Windows Azure facilitates enormously the creation of VMs for software evaluation purposes. You can also learn more about the new features in BizTalk 2010 R2 CTP in this great post by Nitin Mehrotra.

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