Download the VM Role Authoring Tool for Windows Azure Pack

A few days ago, the new VM Role Authoring Tool for Windows Azure Pack (WAP) and System Center 2012 R2 has been released on Codeplex. This tool is used to author the VM Role 'Resource Definition' and 'Resource Extension' artifacts.

Here's a description of the tool taken from Codeplex:

The release of the Virtual Machine Role in Windows Azure Pack and System Center 2012 R2 introduces a cloud service application deployment model to deploy virtual machine workloads that will be deployable on premise and in Windows Azure in the coming year.

 

Hand-crafting these packages against the published schemas of the model is a slow and tedious task.

 

You can download it from here: https://vmroleauthor.codeplex.com/

If you want to see this tool in action, then I highly recommend you check out this series of tutorials from Microsoft's Charles Joy here:

Creating a Linux VM Role Resource Definition
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrGjA1mYN4M

Creating a Linux VM Role Resource Extension
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdVsmF4GeYE

Creating a Windows Server VM Role Resource Definition
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66zznivfh_s

Creating a Windows Server VM Role Resource Extension  
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCilD2P8vhE

Updating a Virtual Machine Role Gallery Item
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAm38TMz8RU

When you've watched the video's, I'd recommend that if you're interested in WAP and System Center 2012 R2, then you subscribe to Charles' YouTube channel (http://www.youtube.com/user/charlesjoyMS) to keep up to date with anything new he releases.