Using Visual Studio with Github to Test New Azure CLI Features

27th of October, 2017 / / No Comments

Following the Azure Managed Kubernetes announcement yesterday, I immediately upgraded my Azure CLI on Windows 10 so I could try it out.
Unfortunately I discovered there was a bug with retrieving credentials for your newly created Kubernetes cluster – the command bombs with the following error:

C:\Users\rafb> az aks get-credentials --resource-group myK8Group --name myCluster
[Errno 13] Permission denied: 'C:\\Users\\rafb\\AppData\\Local\\Temp\\tmpn4goit44'
Traceback (most recent call last):
 File "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Azure\CLI2\lib\site-packages\azure\cli\main.py", line 36, in main
 cmd_result = APPLICATION.execute(args)
… [Keep reading] “Using Visual Studio with Github to Test New Azure CLI Features”

Static Security Analysis of Container Images with CoreOS Clair

21st of August, 2017 / / No Comments

Container security is (or should be) a concern to anyone running software on Docker Containers. Gone are the days when running random Images found on the internet was common place. Security guides for Containers are common now: examples from Microsoft and others can be found easily online.
The two leading Container Orchestrators also offer their own security guides: Kubernetes Security Best Practices and Docker security.

Container Image Origin

One of the single biggest factors in Container security is determined by the origin of container Images:

  1. It is recommended to run your own private Registry to distribute Images
  2. It is recommended to scan these Images against known vulnerabilities.
… [Keep reading] “Static Security Analysis of Container Images with CoreOS Clair”

Running Containers on Azure

1st of August, 2017 / / 1 Comment

Running Containers in public cloud environments brings advantages beyond the realm of “fat” virtual machines: easy deployments through a registry of Images, better use of resources, orchestration are but a few examples.
Azure is embracing containers in a big way (Brendan Burns, one of the primary instigators of Kubernetes while at Google, joined Microsoft last year which might have contributed to it!)
Running Containers nowadays is almost always synonymous with running an orchestrator which allows for automatic deployments of multi-Container workloads.… [Keep reading] “Running Containers on Azure”

Combining Ansible and AWS Cloudformation for Windows Provisioning

15th of June, 2017 / / No Comments

Imagine an agentless “robot” user that you can program to configure servers, network equipment, public cloud resources, deploy applications, etc.

Ansible is an IT automation solution which was acquired by RedHat in 2015. Already popular before the RedHat takeover, Ansible is becoming and more more common in IT organisations.

Originally targeted at Linux hosts as a target for automated configuration management and orchestration, Ansible acquired in version 2.0 capabilities to automate network devices.

And in version 2.3, which has been just released, Ansible’s Windows friendly features have been seriously augmented with domain related modules and an experimental “runas” feature.… [Keep reading] “Combining Ansible and AWS Cloudformation for Windows Provisioning”