To enable Cloud-OS on my own servers, I have been playing with Windows Azure Pack. The Windows Azure Pack is a collection of Microsoft Azure technologies available to Microsoft customers at no additional cost. The jump start series (Windows Azure Pack: Infrastructure as a Service Jump Start) from Microsoft Virtual Academy was a good refresh personally for me.

In addition to configuring the existing resource providers, I wanted to try out the custom resource providers. I have tried out the following available information.

• Hello World Custom Resource Provider
• Extending Hello World to call SMA Runbook
• Sample Portal Code based on WAP

After going through the code, I still have many questions in my mind on how to implement various scenarios in the custom resource provider. I am going to try out authoring a sample resource provider to enable basic storage functionality. I will update my learnings during the journey.

By the way, most of the information links around WAP can be found at WAPack Wiki, also you can follow all talks @ Twitter.