azure,virtual-machine,azure-virtual-machine,azure-vm-role
The first thing you should do is measure why your your database is performing so slow. Are you hitting the memory limit of your VM? The CPU limit? Or is the performance of the data disks an issue (IOPS)? On MSDN there's a checklist with things you need to consider...
azure,redis,azure-virtual-machine,azure-vm-role,azure-redis-cache
How do you install redis cache on a non-Azure machine? What are you thinking would be different about installing it on an Azure VM? There are lots of how-to's out there: http://freshclickmedia.co.uk/2013/09/installing-redis-on-windows/ 1. Download the latest .exe package from https://github.com/rgl/redis/downloads (choose the appropriate latest 32 or 64 bit version). 2....
You are right. currently Azure does not support tag grouping on VM. The only way is to make a resource group, not so flexible, but currently they (azure dev team) are actively working on it to move whatever resources across resource groups. see related: http://feedback.azure.com/forums/281804-azure-resource-manager/suggestions/6178622-ability-to-move-resources-from-one-resource-group...