Administer User Accounts and Subscriptions

  • Article

 

Applies To: Windows Azure Pack

An account is the highest level of control. A tenant signs up to create an account. Each account can have one or more subscriptions to the plans offered by the hosting service provider. Each subscription is associated with only one plan, but a tenant can have multiple subscriptions.

A plan can have one or more add-ons associated with it. If the administrator has enabled self-service subscription management, a tenant can do the following:

  • Subscribe to one or more plans. Each subscription is associated with one plan.

    You can enable or disable this ability. See the procedure "To Configure User Accounts", later in this topic.

  • Subscribe to add-ons that are associated with a plan.

  • Upload a management certificate.

  • Assign one or more co-administrators to a subscription who can manage services within the subscription.

  • Delete a subscription. This action also deletes all resources (such as web sites, databases, and virtual machines) associated with subscription.

  • Delete an account. This action deletes all subscriptions that belonged to the account.

As an administrator, you can perform the following tasks on accounts and subscriptions:

  • Create a user account for a tenant and also remove it.

  • Add a subscription to a tenant's account.

  • Suspend, activate, or delete a subscription.

  • Add and remove email notifications.

  • Enable or disable self-service subscription management. (Default is enable)

  • Require account validation (default is no), reset the account's password, configure the required password strength, and enable or disable Forgot Password (default is disabled). Note that these particular options are not available if Windows Azure Pack is configured for Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS).

If you suspend a subscription, you can continue to modify the plan associated with the subscription but the tenant will not be able to access any the plan's resources including access to web sites and databases. Virtual machines will continue to run, but not be accessible by the tenant.

A subscription has the following states:

  • Active

  • Suspended

  • Pending delete and deleted

  • Out-of-sync (not associated with a plan)

You can do the following, and also the tenant, on an individual subscription:

  • Add and remove co-administrators to the subscription.

  • Add and remove add-ons that are associated with the subscription's plan. You cannot remove an add-on while it is being used by the tenant.

Administer accounts and create notifications

Both the tenant and the hosting service provider can create an account, and subscribe to a plan. When a hosting service provider creates an account for a tenant, that account must be associated with a plan.

The hosting service provider can also create notifications for tenants such as sending a link to reset passwords. An SMTP server is required to implement notifications.

To create an account for a tenant

  1. In the management portal, click User Accounts.

  2. Specify an email address, a password.

  3. Choose a plan for the tenant. This will create a subscription to the plan in addition to creating the user account.

  4. Click Create.

The command bar provides options to suspend an account, reset its password, or delete an account.

To create a notification

  1. In the management portal, click User Accounts.

  2. Click the Notifications tab.

  3. Select a rule and specify settings to send the notification.

    You can also add a new rule and set the event to associate with the rule. Click the Settings tab to configure the SMTP server.

To configure user accounts

  1. In the management portal, click User Accounts.

  2. Click the Configure tab.

  3. You can configure the following values:

    • Password strength

    • Enable or disable tenant subscription management

    • Have a tenant's account (email address) validated.

    • Use the "Forgot Password" feature. Note that this option does not appear if the hosting service provider chooses to opt out of implementing this feature of Windows Azure Pack.

See Also

Administer Windows Azure Pack for Windows Server
Administer Plans and Add-ons
Windows Azure Pack subscription states