The Microsoft Azure Marketplace has been around for quite some time now and have a large selection of third party solutions. If you think of your Azure environment like a smart phone, Azure Marketplace is the app store. And what do you do on your phone when you need an app for a specific purpose? Do you write it yourself? No, you go in to the app store and download the app. The exact same thing can be done with Azure Marketplace but in this case it's not an app, it's can be anything from a Firewall to protect your web application to big data analytics solutions.
In the Azure Marketplace there are seven different categories of applications or services: Virtual Machines, Developer Services, API Apps, Azure Active Directory applications, Web Applications, Data Services and Microsoft Dynamics Solutions.
In this blog post I will focus on Virtual Machines.
To list all of the available Virtual Machines you can go
here. You can filter on operating system (Linux and Windows), you can filter on the source of the Virtual Machine (Community, Partner and Microsoft) and you can filter the once that you can use for free if you have MSDN.
Let's go thru an example with some easy steps to deploy a Virtual Machine to your Azure Subscription.
Barracuda Web Application Firewall
The Barracuda Web Application Firewall blocks application layer DDoS and other attack vectors, directed at online applications hosted in Microsoft Azure. Simultaneously, it provides superior protection against data loss. It also has strong authentication and access control capabilities for restricting access to sensitive applications and data.
The Barracuda Web Application Firewall sits between your application tier and the built in load balancer in Azure.
Step by step deployment
- Sign in to your Azure Account http://portal.azure.com
- Click on the plus sign in the upper left corner to create a new resource and type Barracuda Web Application Firewall and hit Enter. You will now be presented with two options. One called Barracuda Web Application Firewall (Hourly) and one called Barracuda Web Application Firewall (BYOL). The Hourly version vill charge your for the Barracuda license at the same way that Azure charges your for the Virtual Machine. That is, if the machine is running you are paying for it and when you stop it, the charges stop. The BYOL verions means that you have your own existing license that you use. BYOL stands for Bring Your Own License.
- Choose the license that fits your need and move forward to create the Virtual Machine.
- Go thru the Basics, Size and Settings dialog and ensure that the validation passes on the Summary Page. Now you are all set for the final Buy-step.
- When you click on Buy you will be presented with a summary of what you will be charged. Here you should note that the total price consists of two different parts. One for the third party solution that you have chosen and one for the actual Virtual Machine that the solution will run on. If you are using an account with monetary commitment or free resrouces like MSDN you will not be able to charge to cost for the thrid party solution and will need to have some other form of payment method registered on your account.
In about five minutes your will now have your Barracuda Web Application Firewall ready for use in your own Azure Subscription!
To access your Barracuda Web Application Firewall you can choose one of these options:
- When you created your Virtual Machine a resource called Public IP Adress was also created. You can find this resource in resource group for you Virtual Machine. Use this IP adress to access the administration page of the Web Application Firewall. The administration page uses port 8000 by default.
- In the settings page for the Public IP Adress you can add a DNS name label. This can be found under Configuration. You will still need to add port 8000 when accessing the administration page.
