Dev-Test Starts with IT: Create simple, cloud-only dev-test configurations using Resource Manager templates

Sixty-five percent of developers say it’s too complicated and time-consuming to get dev-test resources.* It doesn’t have to be. This blog series will provide guidance on setting up dev-test environments with the help of the Microsoft cloud so that you can get the most out of dev-test in minutes—not hours or days.

Azure makes it easy to set up a dev-test environment for your applications and all of their components: web app, database, database server, storage, and any third-party services. Azure Resource Manager can help you simplify deployment and management of all of the app resources and services.

Resource Manager gives you the ability to deploy, manage, and monitor the components of your apps in a resource group, rather than handling services and resources individually. You can create resource groups and then move resources to different groups and add new resources to existing groups.

You can also use Resource Manager templates to quickly deploy apps within a new or existing resource group, including the following cloud-only dev-test configurations:
•Active Directory domain controllers, a highly available, two-server Active Directory Domain Services domain configuration
•SharePoint Server 2013, a three-server or nine-server SharePoint farm
•SQL Server AlwaysOn, a five-server SQL Server AlwaysOn with Availability Groups configuration
•WordPress Server, a WordPress Server running on Ubuntu

These are great starting points to explore Resource Manager templates before authoring your own.

Source: Business Case for Test Environment Management Whitepaper, Cognizant: https://azure.microsoft.com