Labs Overview

This course includes labs in which you can try out the techniques demonstrated in the activities for yourself.

Things you should know before you begin:

To complete these practical exercises you will require the following:

• a Microsoft Account
• an Azure subscription
• Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) account.

Setup

1. If you already have a Microsoft account that has not already been used to sign up for a free Azure trial subscription, you are ready to get started. If not, do not worry, just create a new Microsoft account

2. After you have created a Microsoft account, create your free Microsoft Azure account. You’ll need to sign-in with your Microsoft account if you’re not already signed in. Then you will need to:

   • Enter your mobile phone number and have Microsoft send you a text message to verify your identity.
   • Enter the code you have been sent to verify it.
   • Provide valid payment details. This is required for verification purposes only – your credit card won’t be charged for any services you use during the trial period, and the account is automatically deactivated at the end of the trial period unless you explicitly decide to keep it active. For more information, see the frequently asked questions on the Azure sign-up page.

3. You will also require a Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) account. Details on signing up for a free Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) account are available on the Visual Studio page

Updates to Azure and VSTS

Like many other cloud infrastructure platforms today, Azure and VSTS are continuously developing updates to their services and components. If you’ve had your own subscriptions for any length of time, you are already aware that changes to services happen much more rapidly than with more traditional application deployment models.

Every effort will be made to update course content where there are major changes to product functionality. However, there will be occasions where course content does not exactly match the latest version of the product. In most cases, you should still be able to understand the tasks and complete the course. The general guidance from the Azure documentation teams is to check the documentation frequently to see what upcoming notifications have been posted or where documentation has been updated to reflect the latest changes.

We encourage you to consult Azure and VSTS Features Timeline updates as a starting point for the latest information about updates. From there, you can avail yourself of blogs and other resources that are provided in order to help you stay current in a cloud-enabled world.

Visual Studio Code

If you are looking for an editor to edit files and scripts, one option is to use Visual Studio Code, which is lightweight and is compatible with most available hardware and platform versions.

Mac OS X

1. Download Visual Studio Code for Mac OS X.

2. Double-click on the downloaded archive to expand the contents.

3. Drag Visual Studio Code.app to the Applications folder, making it available in the Launchpad.

4. Add Visual Studio Code to your Dock by right-clicking on the icon, and choosing Options, Keep in Dock.

Linux

1. Download Visual Studio Code for your distribution, .deb for Debian-based distributions such as Ubuntu or .rpm for Red Hat-based distributions, such as Fedora or CentOS.

2. Install the package through a graphical user interface package manager by double-clicking on the package file, or through the command line:

   bash # For .deb sudo dpkg -i.deb

   # For .rpm (Fedora 21 and below) sudo yum install.rpm

   # For .rpm (Fedora 22 and above) sudo dnf install.rpm

3. Visual Studio Code should now be available to run through the launcher or the command line by running code.

Tip: Run code in any folder to start editing files in that folder.

Windows

1. Download Visual Studio Code for Windows.

2. To launch the setup process, double-click VSCodeSetup.exe.

   By default, Visual Studio Code is installed in the “C:Program Files (x86)Microsoft VS Code” folder location (for a 64-bit machine). The setup process should only take about a minute.

   Note: .NET Framework 4.5 is required for Visual Studio Code. If you are using Windows 7, please ensure .NET Framework 4.5 is installed.

For more detailed instructions and tips, visit the full Microsoft Visual Studio Code Installation Instruction guide here.